Janan Rosling Response
Victor Tran
Feb 4 2020
Sources:
What is Human Development Cont.
The Best Stats you’ve never seen
Selim Jahan denounces the focus on economic growth as a quanitifier of human development. Values such as GDP should not be used as a standard to compare nations on human development, because it is narrow-minded and does not truly measure the human development. He first defined what exactly what human development was, which is the combination of having the capabilities of humans enhanced, such as better access to high quality health care and nutrition, and the opportunities for people to utilize their capabilties such as being able to innovate and be an entrepreneur. If humans have the ability to use their skills to their full potential, then they will be an effective and contributing member of society. However, these ideas cannot be measured based on how much money a country has. Human development is “of the people, for the people, and by the people” since the goal is to increase the overall well-being of humans, which is done by helping other humans, and this process is performed by other humans. What we are currently doing (providing resources, aid, and money) is certainly beneficial and helping people live better lives, but it is not developing humans on a grander scale. For example, innovation through entrepreneurship and the arts is not increased through these methods. Human development measures have two key anchors: breadth measurement and focus measurement. Breadth measurement includes numerical and comparable data such infant mortality rate, mortality rate, employment rate. Focus measurements, which are used by the Human Development Index, include long and healthy life, knowledge, and decent standard of living. This would help supply the necessities for human development to grow.
Additionally, Selim Jahan encourages a focus on the entirety of works, not just income-based jobs that are a necessity for a person to surivive. This includes creative works such as music and art, care work like taking care of the elderly or children, and volunteer work such as working at a shelter. When we focus on all of the types of works, we will be able to help maximize human’s reaching their potential as they will be constructive member’s of society contributing to different parts. There are other issues such as gaps in employment from youth and gender (women being the main caregivers).
Rosling cleared misconceptions that many westerners have about human development in non-western countries. Most westerners believe that there is a clear distinction between their countries and what they believe to be third world countries. In particular, they believed that the west had a focus on long life and small families while the third world countries had shorter lives with larger families. While this may have been the case in the past such as the 1950’s, it is simply not the case anymore in most of the world. Countries such as Vietnam now have longer lives and smaller families. Rosling shows graphics demonstrating the wealth of countries as curves and in the 1970’s, there was a bimodal distribution with mostly Asian countries being in poverty. However, these countries are now out of poverty and as time passes, the distribution of income is to become a bell curve. Such growths were introduced by social change. On a graph of child survival rate and income, those with the higher child survival rates had higher incomes. The countries which received humanitarian aid such as Sierra Leone and Uganda also did well in terms of economoic growth. He gave an example of how Mao Zedong gave better health to China and the following leader was able to bring China to a higher economic status because of that. United Arab Emirates was on the decline with lower oil prices, but the leader Sheikh Zayed was able to bring higher standard of health which was also followed by an increase in economic growth. Countries that focus on health rather than economic growth will grow economically as well.
Another issue is how countries are portrayed based on their averaged data. Many countries are not all rich or all poor. There are levels of economic wealth within countries. Countries such as Niger and South Africa have very contrasting levels of wealth within their respective countries, with Niger creating a line on a graph of economic wealth. When people such as politicians make their opinions based on these averages, they are making their decisions based on inaccurate data that does not truly encapsulate the country’s current status. They will therefore end up making less effective decisions. The context behind these numbers must be understood before they are used