Measuring development
Development is measured using聽development indicators.
Two sets of indicators are used to gather information of a country. Both social and聽economic indicators聽can be used to determine if a country is developed or developing, and to identify the main similarities and differences between them.
Social indicators
A social indicator tends to focus on people. Social indicators measure the access a population has to factors such as:
- education
- nutrition
- health
Examples of social indicators
- Life expectancy - the average age to which a person lives, eg in 2021, this was 81 in the UK and 61 in Kenya.(Source: United Nations Population Division)
- Infant mortality rate - counts the number of babies, per 1000 live births, who die under the age of one. In 2021, this was 4 in the UK and 28 in Kenya. (Source: UN Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation)
- Calories per person聽- the number of calories consumed per person per day.
- Literacy rate聽- is the percentage of people aged over 15 years who can read and write. This is 99 per cent in the UK, 83 per cent in Kenya and 76 per cent in India (Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics)
Economic indicators
An economic indicator tends to focus on money and wealth. They聽are a measure of a country's wealth and how it is generated. They give a very accessible measure of the amount of wealth in the economy of one country compared with another.
Examples of economic indicators
- Gross National Product (GNP)聽measures the total amount a country makes from selling all the goods and services it produces to other countries around the world
- Gross National Income (GNI) per capita (Per capita聽means聽per person). The value of a country's income, divided by the number of people in that country.
- Percentage of population employed in agriculture measures what percent of the total population works in the farming sector. This is higher in developing countries as many people farm to grow their own food. In more developed countries this percentage would be lower as farms are run as businesses growing crops to make a profit.