Cambridge IGCSE Geography · Paper 2

Development

Measure development, examine global inequalities and evaluate strategies designed to improve quality of life.

IndicatorsInequalityAidStrategies

What is development?

Development is about improving people’s lives .
To ensure better quality of living.
Promoting human dignity and respect.
Positive change for betterment.
More equal society and justice for everyone.
Chance to earn a good living and ability to meet the basic needs of life in terms of access to food, water, sanitation, quality education, health services.
Development is about finding ways to live sustainably.

Objectives of Development

Raising peoples’ living standards.
Establishment of social, political and economic justice
Increasing peoples’ freedom to choose by enlarging the range of choices

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UNDP: What are the Sustainable Development Goals?

Life of an average American teenager

Life-struggle in a Bolivian village

Living in poverty and destitute

UNDP: Sustainable Development Goals 2030

Classification of production into different sectors

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Primary Sector	Extraction of raw materials from the nature e.g. agriculture, fishing, farming, forestry and mining etc.
Secondary Sector	Transforming raw materials into semi-finished goods or finished goods. This sector includes metal working and smelting, automobile production, textile production, chemical and engineering industries, aerospace manufacturing, energy utilities, engineering, breweries and bottlers, construction, and shipbuilding.
Tertiary Sector	Provision of services to businesses and consumers. Activities associated with this sector include retail and wholesale sales, transportation and distribution, entertainment (movies, television, radio, music, theatre, etc.), restaurants, clerical services, media, tourism, insurance, banking, healthcare, and law. In most developed and developing countries, a growing proportion of workers are devoted to the tertiary sector. In the U.S., more than 80% of the labor force is tertiary worker.
Quaternary Sector	Research and development, This sector is said to be that of intellectual organization in a society such as research organization, cultural programs, information technology (IT), higher education, and libraries.
Quinary Sector	Highest levels of decision making in a society or economy. Top executives (CEOs) or officials in senior management in different organization as in government (Ministers, diplomats), Universities (Head of the organization) etc.

Generalized divisions of countries at different stages of socio-economic and political development

More Economically Developed Countries (MEDCs)- Germany, Canada, New Zealand, Norway etc (all of these countries have 0.9 HDI score).

Less Economically Developed Countries (LEDCs)- Bangladesh, Pakistan, Myanmar etc.
LDC are least developed countries having very poor HDI ranking. They are the most merginalized countries in the world that are relatively unaffected by the global interactions. LDC were mostly the heavily indebted poor countries. 49 countries have been identified as LDCs in 2019 and majority of them (more than 30) are located in Africa.
Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPCs) –the HIPC initiatives are nearly complete with 36 countries reaching the completion point in 2016 under HIPC initiative. The HIPC Initiative and MDRI (Multilateral debt relief initiatives) are nearly complete, with 36 countries having already reached the completion point under the HIPC Initiative. Chad, in April 2015, is the latest country to reach the completion point. Debt relief under the Initiative has alleviated debt burdens substantially in recipient countries.

Newly Industrialized Countries (NICs)- Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea (known as four Asian Tigers), Thailand, Turkey, Mexico, Brazil, India, China, South Africa, Malaysia, Argentina.
Emerging Market Economies: BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), Indonesia. These countries are large demographic power ensuring large domestic market and skilled work force, high economic growth rate of more than 5% that confirms rising disposable income.
Transition economy or transitional economy is an economy, which is changing from a centrally planned economy to a market economy. For example, China, former Soviet Union and the group of communist bloc in the Central and Eastern Europe like Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania etc.

Discuss: Is China a transition economy?

Indicators to determine the level of development of a country

Different countries of the world are classified according to their level of social and economic development. Levels of development are dependent on physical or environmental, economic, demographic, socio-cultural and political factors. Development involves complex series of interlinked processes (refer to the development cable diagram above).

Development Gap: indicates inequality in the process of development. It denotes polarization based on ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’. Development gap may exists between countries or even within a country. Development gap could be generated due to Historical (colonial past), Physical (extreme environment, landlocked countries), economic (lack of investment and opportunities), demographic (unskilled working class, declining birth rate) or political (corruption) reasons.

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Types of indicator	Measures of development	Description	Developmental gap
Demographic and Social	Adult Literacy	The percentage of adults who can read and write with understanding.	The global literacy rate for adults (age 15+) is about 86–87% worldwide. That means roughly 8 out of every 10 people can read and write a simple sentence. Male literacy rate: about 90% Female literacy rate: about 83% Around 739 million adults still lack basic literacy skills globally.
Demographic and Social	Life expectancy	The average age that a person is expected to live from birth.	According to WHO, 72 years was the average life expectancy at birth of the global population. Life expectancy varies widely: In many high-income countries, it is above 80 years In some low-income or conflict-affected countries, it can be below 60 years. The country with the highest life expectancy is Monaco at 87 years; followed by Japan, Singapore, Switzerland, Spain. The country with the lowest life expectancy is Chad around 49 years. These countries tend to have: Strong healthcare systems, High living standards, Healthy diets, Low violent crime rates. Global life expectancy has generally increased over the last century because of: Better healthcare Vaccinations Improved sanitation Better nutrition Lower child mortality rates High elderly care quality. Women generally live longer than men in nearly every country.
Demographic and Social	Infant mortality Child mortality (under 5 years of age)	The number of babies who don’t survive to the age of 1 (infant) per 1,000 live births. 60–80% of the infant mortality in developing countries are mostly caused by birth defects, preterm birth and low birth weight, maternal pregnancy complications.	Afghanistan recorded the highest infant mortality rate in the world, with 111 deaths per 1,000 children 5 years old and younger. Accessing healthcare in Afghanistan is very difficult for pregnant women and young babies. Monaco, a small wealthy country in Europe records the lowest count with 1.8 because of its good healthcare system and woman education.
Economic	GNI per capita	Gross national income per person. The value of a country’s income, divided by the number of people in that country.	Qatar has the world’s highest GNI per capita while Burundi and the Central African Republic have the lowest incomes out of any country in the world. Almost half of the world’s population live on less than $2.50 a day.
Social and environmental	Access to safe clean water	The percentage of people who have access to safe, clean water for their day to day needs.	1 in 3 people globally do not have access to safe drinking water, among whom 7 out of 10 live in rural areas and one third live in the Least Developed Countries.
Social and demographic	People per doctor	the number of people per doctor. A lower ratio can indicate a richer country.	Tanzania, Malawi, Niger and most of the LDCs in Africa has the lowest number of doctors per 1000 (less than 2 doctors per 100,000 people). The UK has fewer doctors per head of population than most other countries in OECD.
Economic and social	Unemployment rate	People as a percentage of the labour force those who are willing and available to work, but not getting a job for their qualification.	Syria at present has the highest unemployment rate at 50%. The continent of Africa registers the higher average unemployment rate of more than 20%. Most of the developed countries register below 10% unemployment rate. There are just two nations Cambodia and Thailand with unemployment rates of less than 1%, mainly because of the self employed informal sector job.
Social	Internet penetration rate	Percentage of the population having access to telecommunication network and technology infrastructure	About 74% of the world’s population has access to and uses the internet as of 2025. That equals roughly 6 billion people online worldwide. That also means around 26% of people (about 2.2 billion) are still offline globally. Access varies a lot by region: Higher-income countries often exceed 90% internet penetration Some low-income countries are still below 30%. In North Korea, internet access is extremely limited. Estimates suggest that fewer than 1% of the population has access to the global internet. Most ordinary citizens cannot freely use the internet at all. Instead, many people who use digital networks access a government-controlled intranet called Kwangmyong, which is separate from the global internet and heavily monitored.
Political	Political Transparency	Denotes openness, accountability, and honesty of the politicians. Country’s voting system and the nature of democracy.	According to Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) ranking Denmark and New Zealand, Finland, Sweden are perceived as the least corrupt countries in the world where as Somalia, North Korea, South Sudan and Yemen are perceived as the most corrupt countries in the world.

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Purely Economic Measures of Development:

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the total economic output of a country in a year. It is the total value of all final goods and services produced within an economy over a period of time, usually a year. GDP is an indicator of the local/national economy.

GDP per capita to understand how the wealth is distributed within the population, however as it is an average, extreme rich and poor will be neutralized by the result. GDP per capita is the total output divided by the total number of people or population, i.e. the average amount of money each person makes.

Gross National Product (GNP): GNP is the total value of all the goods and services produced domestically and abroad by the citizen’s of a country. GNP represents how the nationals of a country are contributing to the country’s economy giving importance to citizenship but overlooks location.

Gross National Income (GNI): The total value of goods and services produced in a country (i.e. GDP), together with the balance of income and payments from or to other countries (including interest payment and dividends). GNI per person provides a better picture of the wealth distribution.

Better solution to GNI measure is to consider GNI at PPP:

Purchasing power parity (PPP): Is the measure of the average earnings in relation to local prices (i.e. how much one can buy in local currency equivalent to 1 dollar). PPP is a macroeconomic approach to compare economic productivity and standards of living between countries. It is based on “basket of goods” approach to compare the buying power of a local currency. The GNI of a country is converted into US dollars on the basis of how the value of a currency can be compared to other countries in relation to the buying power of the currency. PPP is calculated by comparing the price of good ‘X’ in different countries. To make a meaningful comparison of prices across countries, a wide range of goods and services must be considered. The popular “Big Mac Index” (the price of Big Mac hamburger across many countries) is popularly used to compare PPP in many cases.

Why only economic indicator is not reliable to measure development or disparities?

Development is not purely an economic phenomenon but a multi-dimensional process involving reorganization and reorientation of the entire economic and social system. These measures are purely economic and are not composite indicator. They do not provide any idea of human capital formation (education, training, health condition), gender equality, and condition of human rights. Even as an economic indicator it is not a holistic one as it does not include the income generated by the informal economy, which plays a significant role in many developing countries. There are alternative well developed composite measures available since 1990s like HDI including GDI etc that measures average achievements of the population in terms of health, education and access to goods and services.

Human Development Report 2026 update (2025 data)

Link: https://hdr.undp.org/data-center/country-insights#/ranks

Make a list of the First five and Last Five in the list: Analyze why this is so?

Composite Indicator (HDI- Human Development Index)

HDI was devised by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in 1990s and has been in use in its current form since 2010. HDI is a composite indicator that ranks countries from 0 to 9 index values based on the following criteria.

Economic Criteria : Gross National Income per capita adjusted for purchasing power parity

Social Criteria: life expectancy and literacy.

With more than 0.9 index value Norway, Switzerland, Australia, Ireland and Germany are the top rankers in 2018 HDI report. On the other hand, with 0.3 HDI index values Niger, Central African Republic, South Sudan, Chad and Sierra Leone rank the lowest.

Task: Locate the countries on the map of the continent of Africa

What is HDI?

Poorest countries

The most developed countries (HDI ranking)

Inequality within a country

Rwanda: Africa's Singapore

Click here to read how the proportion employed in each sector vary according to the level of development

Globalization and its impacts

What is globalization: “The growing interdependence of countries worldwide through the increasing volume and variety of cross border transactions in goods and services and of international capital flows, and through the more rapid and widespread diffusion of technology” (source: IMF).
It is a process that erodes national boundaries, integrates national economies, culture, technologies and governance, and produces complex relations of mutual interdependence.

Transnational Corporation or Transnational enterprise (TNC/MNC): A trans or multinational enterprise is a company or firm that has established production or other operations in more than one country through foreign direct investment. According to World Investment Report 2017, there are more than 82000 TNCs worldwide with more than 800000 foreign affiliates. Top 20 world largest corporations in 2017 are mostly American, Chinese, Japanese and French and German.

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Global Impacts	1. Enhancement of world trade and growing power of TNCs and large brands. 2. Increasing interdependence and complexity of the global economy. FDI, outsourcing, role of the trading bloc such as EU, mass scale production are gaining more importance. 3. Cultural diffusion through labour movement, international tourism and migration playing a great role in the development of a hybrid global culture. 4. World is becoming a ‘Global village’ through high end connectivity and diffusion of internet technology. 4. Development of the civil society to safe guard interest such as Greenpeace.5. Emergence of increasing number of NICs 6. Increasing cultural diversity within a country.
National level	1. Increasing transboundary pollution for example Fly-tipping (illegal deposit or dumping of waste). 2. International tourism as rise of mass tourism. 3. Concern about loss of sovereignty (autonomous decision making power of a country). 4. Growth of anti-globalization movement as an overreaction to loss of jobs to international labour and increasing cultural diversity diluting national identity. 5. Repatriation of TNCs profit (not paying taxes to the local authority). 6. Rise of Alpha cities as global hubs.
Local	1. Unemployment, uncertainty and loss of jobs due to the operation of the large global TNCs. Small local businesses find it difficult to compete with the large TNCs. 2.Rise of multicultural communities and cuisine. 3. Development of ethnic villages within cities such as China town in many megacities. 4. Creation of consumer culture and acceptance of global brands such as McD, Apple, Nike etc. 5. More connectedness through global social media such as facebook, instagram etc.