Measuring development
Lesson details
Learning outcome
I can explain the different ways in which social and economic development is measured, and the limitations of individual economic and social measures used.
Key learning points
- There are global variations in economic development and quality of life.
- There are a range of different measures of level of development.
- There are limitations of both economic and social measures.
Keywords
Development - the progress of a country in terms of wealth, use of technology and human welfare
Gross national income (GNI) - a measure of goods and services produced by a country, including income earned abroad; may be divided by the total population to give ‘GNI per head’
Life expectancy - average number of years an individual can expect to live at birth; worldwide this doubled from 1900 to 2021
Human Development Index (HDI) - a UN measure of development calculated using education, life expectancy and income data
Common misconception
That everyone in a country with a high GNI is well off, with a good quality of life.
A country’s income is not equally divided by everyone who lives there. This is why GNI per head should be used along side other measures in order to understand differences in quality of life.
Teacher tip
Skills: There is an opportunity to reinforce understanding of averages (mean, mode, median) and categorisation of data as quantitative or qualitative.
Licence
Lesson video
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Prior knowledge starter quiz
6 Questions
Q1.Life satisfaction is a subjective measure of of life.
Q2.One limitation of using ‘life satisfaction’ to compare countries is that the results vary …
Q3.Development is the progress of a country in terms of wealth, use of and human welfare.
Q4.What type of international rules have been recognised as limiting the growth of lower income countries?
Q5.In the 1990s, Amartya Sen widened the definition of development to include human and suggested everyone had an equal entitlement to a good life.
Q6.By when have countries pledged to try to achieve the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)?
Assessment exit quiz
4 Questions
Q1.The UK’s gross national income (GNI) is a measure of goods and services produced …
Q2.GNI per is an economic measure of development and is the value of average income per person within a population, if the total were split equally between them.
Q3.The Human Development Index (HDI) is a combined measure of and economic development.
Q4.Which of the following development measures is included in the UN's Human Development Index (HDI)?
To help you plan your 11 geography lesson on: Measuring development, download all teaching resources for free and adapt to suit your pupils' needs...
To help you plan your 11 geography lesson on: Measuring development, download all teaching resources for free and adapt to suit your pupils' needs.
The starter quiz will activate and check your pupils' prior knowledge, with versions available both with and without answers in PDF format.
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The assessment exit quiz will test your pupils' understanding of the key learning points.
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Explore more key stage 4 geography lessons from the Global variations in economic development unit, dive into the full secondary geography curriculum, or learn more about lesson planning.