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Standard of Living. Comparing Canada to the World. PLO’s – Human Geography. Compare Canada’s Standard of Living with those of developing countries, with reference to poverty and key indicators of human development Specifically, what indicators are used by the UN to measure Living Standards
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Standard of Living Comparing Canada to the World
PLO’s – Human Geography • Compare Canada’s Standard of Living with those of developing countries, with reference to poverty and key indicators of human development • Specifically, what indicators are used by the UN to measure Living Standards • Also, what can be done to improve standards (life expectancy, etc.)
The UN Human Development ReportFigure 14-1, pg. 341, Fig. 14-2, pg. 342 • An index that ranks countries on three measures: adult literacy, life expectancy and per capita GDP • GDP is total value of all goods and services produced in a country in one year • Divide that number by a country’s population and you have per capita GDP • This report is a crude indicator of levels of economic and social development – countries that rank high are developed and affluent (low rank equals poor development and growth)
Developed Nations • This term refers to nations that are industrialized, with their people well-housed, healthy, and educated • Well developed infrastructure such as communication and transportation systems, electrical grid, schools and hospitals • DEVELOPING countries lack modern infrastructure and industry
Comparing Living Standards (Food PPT!) • Difficult to do sometimes • Non-monetary transactions are difficult to trace – this makes measuring economic output in developing countries difficult • Wealth can be unevenlydistributed – ie. Saudi Arabia with mega-rich and extreme poor – skews statistics • Quality of life includes health (infant mortality, etc), nutrition, status of women – these are supplied by gov’ts of wealthy nations, not in the poor – hard to account for
Poverty • Estimates are controversial, but some measures suggest that ~1.3 billion people live below the poverty line (in the Developing World that equates to earning less than $1 per day) • The poverty line is different in Canada, due to greater cost of living – here we measure by people having to spend more than 56% of their income on life’s necessities • Figure estimated that 5.1 million Canadians were in this category
Developing World Poverty • Greatly related to inability to purchase food • Also, debt is a major problem • The debts of these nations are linked to loans that were granted – western nations wanted to help these countries develop their infrastructure – dams, highways, etc • However, many developing countries have been unable to repay these debts, and now payments on these debts take up huge amounts of budgets – money that can’t be spent on education, health, development programs, etc
Poverty Cycle • See p. 347 text for detailed version • On a basic level, poor healthcare and nutrition leads to developmental difficulties, which causes problems in literacy and academic progress • This leads to reduced ability to be successful in the workplace, leading to poor wages, poor diet and health, young marriage often occurs as well, with poor job prospects • Families are forced into debt and poverty, leading to malnourished babies, completing the cycle • The key to breaking this cycle is improved education and nutrition/healthcare
Solutions • Since WWII, the developed world has been providing aid (money, etc) to the developing world • Aid is dwarfed by military expenditures however • Comes in a variety of forms • MultilateralAid: funded by a number of gov’ts, usually for large scale projects • Tied Aid: conditions are attached, like purchasing goods from certain companies, etc • Aid is received from many sources: UN, CIDA and NGO’s like Oxfam and Rotary