How is A Countries Development Defined and Measured?

What does the term development even mean in terms of a country? To say a country is developing, is to say that progress is being made in technology, production, and socioeconomic well-being (Fouberg, Murphy, de Blij 337). Ways of measuring development fit into three major areas but beginning in the 1960s geographers started to compare the development between countries by the gross national product(GNP). The GNP is a measure of the total value of the officially recorded goods and services produced by the citizens and corporations of a country in a given year (Fouberg, Murphy, de Blij 337). In more recent years, the gross national income (GNI) has been used. The GNI calculates the monetary worth of what is produced within a country plus income received from investments outside the country minus income payments to other countries around the world (Fouberg, Murphy, de Blij 337). A few problems with calculation the development with the GNI is that it only takes into consideration formal transactions that the government can monitor. There are some countries that have a GNI less than $1,000 per year. With this low of a GNI, it seems impossible for people to be surviving but these countries have many informal transactions which the government cannot monitor.Another issue with the GNI is that it does not show how wealth is distributed. For example, the oil countries of the middle east, have a very high GNI. This is because they export lots of oil. Because the GNI is very high, it would seem as if ALL the middle east oil countries are doing well, but that is because with GNI there is no way to see what the wealth distribution is throughout the whole area. There are many more problems with GNI but in the end, it does do a pretty good job. Also, because of these problems many analysts have looked for alternate ways to measure economic development. Some analysts have focused on technology, and some on social welfare. What they found was that even when looking at different stats, they all share some similarities with GNI.

     Fouberg, Murphy, de Blij. Human Geography: People, Place, and Culture. 10th ed. Wiley, 2012. Print