Economic Development Vs Economic Growth

Economic Development vs Economic Growth
Economic Growth is a measurement of change of a country’s national output that can be

measured by the Gross Domestic Product and Gross National Product. This refers to the country as a
whole. It does not pertain particularly on people’s standard of living. A country can have economic
growth but it can be under developed in terms of other aspects like health, education and people’s
standard of living.
On the other hand, the measurement of economic development is beyond gross domestic
product and gross national product. Economic development can be measured based on human
development index. It refers to the improvement in people’s standard of living. Unlike economic growth,
economic development can be felt by the people as it pertains to the development of the following:
state of health well-being, education and equality. At the same time, it refers to the reduction of the
following: social crimes, mortality rate and other things that serves as a barrier on expanding the
capabilities of people’s lives.
Example situation: economic growth pertains to the income of the family—per capita income.
While economic development is observed through measuring the following: health care inside the
household, individual’s access to education and their standard of living.
According to Todaro and Smith, the common range of problems experienced by the less
developed countries are:
Lower level of standard of living and labor productivity. Based on my observation, there
are less job opportunities in the less developing countries. Probably one of the reasons why there
are lower level standard of living is due to unemployment. There are families who do not have
regular source of income to satisfy their daily needs. This also results to another common
problem, weak financial market. Less developed countries do not usually experience economic
growth. In connection with that, there is a weak financial market and its role in the country’s
economic efficiency is affected.
Another common problems are weak human capital base, and low level of
industrialization. Human capital base refers to the skills and abilities of the workers. Less
developed countries usually have a hard time to provide educational access to the citizens of their
country that caused weak human capital base because skills and abilities are improved over time
and guided by the professionals which are usually found in schools. At the same time, there is also
low level of industrialization because without education, it will be hard for the countries to
improve industries and other fields.
Population explosion, large rural population and frequent rural-urban migration. The root
of these problems are being economically uninformed and having no idea in terms of family
planning. This indicates poor health care system in less developed countries.
Citizens in the less developed countries are usually less fortunate. Few fortunate and
powerful people abuse their power. They fool uneducated in able to be more powerful. This
results to another problem, high level of economic inequality and absolute poverty.
Lastly, colonial exploitation. If a country needs urgent financial aid, the country practice colonial
exploitation. It is a national economic policy of exploiting its population as labor and its natural resources
as raw material. Due to the country’s urgent financial need, the laborers and natural resources of less
developed countries were sacrificed for the benefit of other developed countries in exchange of satisfying
the financial need of less developed countries.
Yes, low levels of living exist simultaneously with high levels of per capita income. A family
could have a high level of per capita income and low level of living at the same time and this can be due
to high cost of living and other factors. In addition to that, every individual has also different priorities.
Some people spend their money in satisfying their daily needs. While other people spend it in their vices
that could probably lead to low level of living. The high level per capita income is not an assurance of
high level of living. Indications of having high level of living is having a long and healthy life, having
access to education and having a decent living. All of the mention indicators are not observed
quantitatively. Per capita income only measures the income and it does not go beyond that.
Low human development index is HDI of 0.55 or lower. Cameroon ranked 95 with the highest
gross domestic product by 2020 with $1,584 per capita. On the other hand, it has a low human development
index with HDI of 0.556. Cameroon has low HDI due to human rights abuses last 2019. There is no freedom
of expression in Cameroon. There were a lot of attacks and many civilians have been killed. Generally, there
were killings, destruction of property and torture by Cameroon’s government. Aside from that, kidnappings,
torture, occupation of schools by armed separatist. These are just some of the happenings reported at world
reports. Stated happenings are just proof of the country’s low level of living. Despite having a good rate in
GDP, there are no long and healthy life, access to education was affected and there is no decent standard of
living because it is unsafe inside their country.

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Economic Development vs Economic Growth

Economic Growth is a measurement of change of a country’s national output that can be

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