Could someone please provide me with the drawbacks of using the following to measure development of an economy:
GDP per Capita
HDI
Thank You !
Well, I was hoping someone who had a better idea would answer, but seeing as no one has, I guess the disadvantages of using HDI could be along the lines of:
- not all factors taken into account
- changes occurring over time might not be taken into account because difficult/expensive to measure
- not all factors may be able to be measured (e.g. developed countries use a census, but LEDCs might not have the capital or proper government controls to do this, etc.)
- other factors that aren't measurable can't be taken into account (e.g. morale of people, ambition, future prospects, etc)
For the disadvantages of GDP per capita, I can't think of much, besides maybe:
1) regular, detailed calculations may be unable to be made as accurately as desired maybe because all the information is not available
2) businesses might cheat the government (e.g. not report profits/sales, so GDP may actually be higher/lower than what's officially thought to be so)
3) it can really ONLY BE AN ESTIMATE (logically speaking)
4) regular, frequent, or volatile changes in birth rate, death rate, net rate of migration, ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS, etc. can't be taken into account, so population calculation isn't entirely accurate either, thus skewing the "per capita" part
Hope this helped? I tried...
What past paper did you get this question from anyway?