Development and developing countries
Development is a process that refers to improving economic performance, living standards, and other factors that affect the well-being of people living in a country.
The United Nations defines human development as “the expansion of people’s freedoms and capabilities to lead lives they value and have reason to value. It is about expanding choice. Freedoms and capabilities are a broader notion than basic needs “.
It is worth noting that this definition may not be directly comparable to well-being or happiness, which may depend on social relationships and a variety of other factors.
The Human Development Index is a widely recognized tool for measuring progress. Most developing countries have made great progress in recent decades. The median index score increased 41% overall and 60% for the bottom quartile of developing countries since 1970.
The Human Development Report classifies countries into four levels of development: very high, high, medium, and low human development. It evenly assigns a quarter of all countries in the index to each of the four levels. It is debatable whether a better approach to ranking countries might be to assign a range of scores to each level.
Life on less than $1-$2 a day
Too many people have not shared enough about the progress to date. Some 2.47 billion people or 43 percent of the total population of the developing world lived on less than $2 a day in 2008 according to February 2012 World Bank estimates. Of these, almost a third or 801 million people were struggling to survive on not even $1 a day.
inequality adjustments
The United Nations Development Program has refined its approach to measuring human development by adjusting for various dimensions of inequality.
Other approaches
Some organizations have devised other approaches to assess progress in developed and developing countries. The Legatum Prosperity Index rates and ranks the prosperity of countries based on eight “foundations for national development,” including: economy, entrepreneurship and opportunity, governance, education, health, security, personal freedom, and social capital. The most recent version of the Prosperity Index covers 110 countries, while the Human Development Index assesses the development indicators of 187 countries.
Sustainability
The issue of sustainability adds another dimension to the concept of development. The United Nations Development Program defines sustainable human development as “the expansion of the substantive freedoms of people today while making reasonable efforts to avoid seriously compromising those of future generations.” Environmental conservation is a critical component of sustainability.