Development
Domain 3 asks you to evaluate competing meanings of development and the policies justified in its name. Strong answers separate growth, a means, from wellbeing, the end, and measure both.
Core concepts
- Growth measures: GDP and GNI per capita, PPP-adjusted; blind to distribution, unpaid work and environmental cost.
- HDI (1990): combines longevity, education and GNI per capita; built by Mahbub ul Haq with Amartya Sen's capability approach.
- Inequality and poverty: the Gini coefficient; the Multidimensional Poverty Index (2010) counts overlapping deprivations rather than income alone.
- Theories: modernisation (Rostow's stages), dependency (Prebisch, Frank), neoliberal adjustment and the Washington Consensus (Williamson, 1989), the capability approach, post-development.
- Sustainability: the Brundtland definition (1987) of meeting present needs without compromising future generations; the SDGs (2015, 17 goals) replaced the MDGs.
Worked example
Question: GDP per capita is a sufficient measure of development. Compare Equatorial Guinea, with high oil GNI per capita but a modest HDI and extreme inequality, with Costa Rica, which redirected military spending into health and education and reports far higher life expectancy. Reasoning: GDP fails on distribution and non-monetary wellbeing; HDI and MPI correct partly but still miss political freedom and environmental cost. Judgement: necessary but not sufficient, and weakest where rents from oil or minerals dominate.
Traps
- Treating 'developing country' as a single category.
- Citing aid without noting the 0.7% of GNI target and how few donors meet it.
- Ignoring colonial and trade structures when explaining inequality.
- Confusing correlation between aid and growth with causation.