Human development in the world has often been viewed from the stance of a “we” and “they” position. This “we” refers to the western world while they refers to the developing world. Although the stance seems antiquated, it is still far from obsolete. For years people have attributed economic development under the same scope as economic development, a very one sided view of a very broad and changing topic. To effectively evaluate the development of people one must first look more closely at the people, not just the wealth of their country. Selim Jahan and Hans Rosling both approach the situation very similarly in openly stating that a belief that economic development is more important/valid than other factors to support development would be incorrect and frankly ignorant. This idea, although seemingly counterintuitive, garners validity revolutionizing the way people view countries’ development track both historically and now.
Selim Jahan, in his podcast on the Human Development Report (HDR) talks about three specific attributes that things should be for the people, by the people, and of the people. Jahan notes that income is critical but not all encompassing of a population’s well being. He also draws attention to the notion that a far more holistic view serves the evaluation of the topic better. That living longer and healthier lives supplies just as much or even a more supportive factor than income in affirming the development of a people. Rosling supports this idea similarly with his data. There appears that countries that start in similar areas of economic status but different states of life expectancy develop at drastically different rates. To some people’s surprise, nations that had higher life expectancies had rapid economic growth to follow as opposed to nations with a reversed situation, suggesting that a greater importance should be held to the general health of the population to further advance society. A perfect example of this would be comparing a country like South Korea and Brazil. Two decades prior the two started with almost similar economic standings but South Korea had a slightly healthier population. Twenty years later and the economic growth seen in the two nations could not be more different. Another interesting nation to look at in this situation would be the United Arab Emirates which had wealth 20 years ago but not a very high life expectancy. The following progression was rather sporadic with volatile growth in the economic state of the nation as their life expectancy slowly rose.
Another interesting issue with the current way of thinking of supplying aid to nations would be the broad view of nations as a whole as opposed to looking deeper into the state of the nations within the continent and even further the economic bottom and top 20% of each region as Rosling suggests. A topic that was brought up was the HIV crisis in Africa and how aid should be supplied to the region. But to think that people can supply aid to everyone across Africa with one blanket procedure would just be pure ignorance. The top 20% of South Africa and the bottom 20% of NIger are on two ends of the spectrum economically and could not receive the same form of aid. The wealthier in the nation have higher life expectancies while the poorer had lower life expectancies, a trend witnessed across the world in fact. The richer likely do not need as much aid as the poorer and could potentially pay for their own welfare while the poorer may not even be aware of the opportunities available to them to improve their state of health and wellbeing. Jahan similarly placed heavy emphasis on people’s wellbeing in his talk on human development noting that working for money is a sign of a healthy country, but working for others, which is not the same, is almost just as important in noting a country’s development. The work of caretakers, homemakers, artisans and volunteers all suggest a strong and stable developing community but all jobs that supply very little to know economic benefit. Again proving that the economic state of a country cannot blindly be trusted as the sole deciding factor for whether a country is developed or not.
Thus, the development of modern nations in modern times requires a wider lense to properly evaluate because even though economic growth suggests a healthy country, correlation is not causation. Wealth often comes hand in hand with other factors like strong social establishments, stable governments, and more. But when these ancillary factors are not present a country’s growth can be seen to not grow as rapidly or stably.