Human

Environments:
Development
Development indicators.

 Title: Development
indicators
Date: 04/11/15

Aims of this unit:

To find out what we mean by
development.
To find out how we measure
development.
To explore the value of different
development indicators.

Lesson starter:
During S2 you all studied the Global Poverty
unit.
Some of the things that you studied during that
time will help you during the Development unit.
Talk with the people beside you and then answer
the following questions in your jotter.

What do we mean by development?

What makes a country developed?
How do we measure development?
How is development divided on a global scale?

Lesson starter:

What do we
mean by
development
?

Lesson starter:

What makes a
country
developed?

Lesson starter:

How do we
measure
development
?

Lesson starter:

How is
development
divided on a
global scale?

The rich North

The poor south

Task 1:
How do we measure development?
You will be put into groups of 4.
Collect a piece of poster paper and a pen.
Write Development Indicators at the top of
the page.
Talk with each other and try to think of as
many development indicators as you can.
Write them down on the poster paper.

GDP

Birth rate

Number of
newpapers sold
per day.

Calories
consumed per
day

Percentage of
people working in
agriculture

Death rate

Adult literacy rate

Number of cars
per family

Number of people
per rooms in
house.

Infant mortality
rate

Amount of debt a
country has.

Crime rate

People per
hospital

Number of
computers per
family

Obesity rate

Task 2:
How do we categorise indicators?

Now we must put the indicators into

categories.
Can anyone remember what they are?

Development indicators
Development indicators can be split into 3 different
categories:

Economic Indicators
Health Indicators
Social indicators

What do you
think each of
these mean?

Economic Indicators

These indicators are to do

with money and the
economy.

Health Indicators

These indicators are

to do with health
and health care.

Social indicators

These are to do with the

people of the country.
Employment, education,
housing all come under
this banner.

Task 2:
You should now have a large list of indicators on
your poster.
You must identify which ones are Health, Social
and Economic indicators.
Colour code them by drawing a circle around
them in one of the following colours.

Economic Indicators
Health Indicators
Social indicators

Development indicators
worksheet.
Complete the development indicators
sheet in your jotter. You must colour code
the indicators depending on whether they
are Economic, Social or Health.
Then you must pick 4 of the indicators
and explain in detail why it tells you if a
country is developed or not.
(example)

Development indicators worksheet.

Example:
Number of people per doctor:
This tells us how developed a country is in
a number of ways.
If there is a small number of people per
doctor it tells us that health care is good
in a country.
It also means that education will often be
good as people are being educated to the
level of a doctor.
It will also mean that the health of the
people of the country will be good.

Lesson plenary
Pack away your jotters but stay in your seats.
We are going to go around the class and see if we
can come up with a different development
indicator for each person.
When you get one correct you can stand up and
push your chair in.

Development indicators
lesson 2.
Title:
The value of development
indicators.
Date: 04/11/15

Development indicators
lesson 2.
Lesson aims:
To find out why one indicator is not
enough to decide how developed a
country is.
To examine the value of the different
indicators.

Lesson starter
The next slide has a number of
pictures on it. Work out what
indicator they represent and what
category they go into (Health, Social
or Economic)

S2

Life Expectancy

RICH WORLD POOR WORLD

GDP average wealth

of a person
Energy consumed per person

Adult Literacy
Infant Mortality
People per Doctor
People employed in
Agriculture
Calories consumed per day

Question:
One development indicator is
never enough to tell us how
developed a country is.
Do you agree or disagree with this
statement?
What development indicator do you think
is most important?

Development indicators:
The value of indicators.
During the next part of this lesson we are
going to look at the value of different
development indicators.
You will see a number of indicators and
you must discuss the positives and
negatives of each of them.
You must write the indicator down and the
positives and negatives of using it in your
jotter.

Birth Rate

Is this a good indicator of development?

Give reasons.
Positives this could be seen as a good indicator as if
a country has a very high birth rate then it may
mean that it lacks the resources to teach family
planning. It may also mean that families have many
children to help them work on their farms because
many people work in agriculture. It may also indicate
that health care could be poor because people may
have more children in case one dies at a young age.
Negative a country could still be developed or
almost developed but have a high birth rate Brazil
could be an example. It doesnt tell you anything
about the economy.

GDP Gross Domestic Product

Positives - It gives you an indication of how much
money the country as a whole has, if this is high
then you can usually tell that the country is
developed. Money accounts for education, health
care and many other social problems. So if a
country has a high GDP it will usually be
developed.
Negatives - GDP is an average (like all indicators)
so it does not account for differences in a country.
For example China has a high GDP but there are
many people living below the poverty line (in
some cases in rural china less than $1 per day)
while other people are billionaires.

Development indicators value

Development indicators are taken as an average
and because of this they are not always reliable.
One indicator on its own does not show enough
data to tell you if a country is developed or not.
Indicators showing an average do not show you
the extremes in a country for example people
living under the poverty line in the USA while it
has the largest number of billionaires on the
planet.

Human Development Index HDI

In 1990, the UN replaced GNP as the
measurement of development with the
HDI.
It is a social welfare index measuring
human literacy, life expectancy, and the
real GNP that is what an income will
actually buy in a country.
The HDI is an attempt to compare quality
of life between people and places and
,unlike GNP, it can measure differences

Lesson plenary
Top 5 HDI (2011)

Norway 0.943
Australia 0.929
Netherlands 0.910
United States 0.910
New Zealand 0.908
Canada 0.908

Can you guess the

countries with the top
HDI?

Bottom 5(2011)

Chad 0.328
Mozambique 0.322
Burundi 0.316
Niger 0.295
Democratic Republic of Congo 0.286

Can you guess the

countries with the lowe
HDI?

Task

Turn to page 161 of the Geog S.G books.

Complete activities 1-5.