Skip to content
Oak National Academy
Oak National Academy
View my library
0
Teachers
Pupils
New
New
Year 11
AQA

Measuring development

I can understand the different ways in which social and economic development is measured, and the limitations of individual economic and social measures used.

Download all resources
Share activities with pupils
New
New
Year 11
AQA

Measuring development

I can understand the different ways in which social and economic development is measured, and the limitations of individual economic and social measures used.

Download all resources
Share activities with pupils

These resources will be removed by end of Summer Term 2025.

Switch to our new teaching resources now - designed by teachers and leading subject experts, and tested in classrooms.

These resources were created for remote use during the pandemic and are not designed for classroom teaching.

View new resources

Lesson details

Key learning points

  1. There are global variations in economic development and quality of life.
  2. There are a range of different measures of level of development.
  3. 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.


To help you plan your year 11 geography lesson on: Measuring development, download all teaching resources for free and adapt to suit your pupils' needs...

Skills: There is an opportunity to reinforce understanding of averages (mean, mode, median) and categorisation of data as quantitative or qualitative.
Teacher tip

Equipment

Licence

This content is © Oak National Academy Limited (2025), licensed on Open Government Licence version 3.0 except where otherwise stated. See Oak's terms & conditions (Collection 2).

Lesson video

Skip lesson video

Loading...

Prior knowledge starter quiz

Download quiz pdf

6 Questions

Q1.
Life satisfaction is a subjective measure of of life.
Correct Answer: quality
Q2.
One limitation of using ‘life satisfaction’ to compare countries is that the results vary …
Correct answer: by age group within all countries.
between countries.
between continents.
if different questions are asked.
Q3.
Development is the progress of a country in terms of wealth, use of and human welfare.
Correct Answer: technology, Technology
Q4.
What type of international rules have been recognised as limiting the growth of lower income countries?
1 - t
2 - r
3 - a
4 - d
5 - e
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.
1 - w
2 - e
3 - l
4 - f
5 - a
6 - r
7 - e
Q6.
By when have countries pledged to try to achieve the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)?
Correct Answer: 2030

Assessment exit quiz

Download quiz pdf

4 Questions

Q1.
The UK’s gross national income (GNI) is a measure of goods and services produced …
Correct answer: at home and abroad.
in the UK.
abroad by UK companies.
in England and Wales.
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.
Correct Answer: head, Head, capita
Q3.
The Human Development Index (HDI) is a combined measure of and economic development.
1 - s
2 - o
3 - c
4 - i
5 - a
6 - l
Q4.
Which of the following development measures is included in the UN's Human Development Index (HDI)?
access to safe water
Correct answer: life expectancy at birth
infant mortality rate
birth rate