What tells us about the development of a country?

Countries can be divided into two main groups -'developing and developed countries'.  You can get some more information on this on https://kids.kiddle.co/Developing_country

There are certain 'indicators' that will tell geographers how a country is developing.  One of the main questions that they will ask is "What is the standard of living;"  This means how do the people live in the country, do they have jobs, do they have enough food, how healthy are they etc.

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If you watched the video you would have heard a few words that you maybe do not understand.  Lets look at the meaning of some of them

1. The GDP is an indication of how much all the products that are produced and all the services in that country is worth.
2. 'per capita' means per head - if you could divide all off the money in the country between the people, how much each person will get
3. 'infant mortality rate' gives an indication of how many babies die before the age of one.

The first two are some indicators that affects the economy of a country.  Nr 3 is an indicator on the 'social development' of a country.  

Other indicators that will be used to determine the 'social development' are

1. The health of a country - how many doctors are there, how good is the health care system, how many healthy babies are born and what is the age at which people die - the younger they die, or the worse the health of the country is, the lower the development will be.
2. The education is also looked at to see how many kids go to school and how many people can read and write.
3. The 'equality' is looked at like do women have the same rights as men and do they have 'freedom of speech'.

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The size of a country is not something that is taken into account if they try and measure the development, because a country can be very big but poorly developed and then there are big countries that are very well developed.  The amount of people does also not indicate how good a country is developed.

What other factors will influence the development of a country?

• The climate of an area can influence the development - if a country is very hot and the soil is not very fertile, they can have a problem with planting crops, there can be a shortage of water and diseases will be able to spread quickly.
• If a country is rich in 'natural resources' like coal and gold and diamonds etc, it can help with the economy and development of the country.
• If it is easy to reach a country and they have a port, the imports and exports of goods will be easier.
• Places that get a lot of 'natural disasters' like tornadoes and tsunamis etc is not high on the developmental scale.
• If there is a lot of crime or discrimination between the people of the country it can also have an effect, nobody wants to invest in a corrupt country.
• Too many people means that they will use up all the resources and very little will be left over for export.

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