Measuring Development

          This is my group's ranking of the 10 indicators that will determine whether a country is a MEDC or a LEDC. We think that the most important indicator is the GNP (Gross National Product) as that will show how wealthy a country is. This statistic is extremely important because if we know how rich a country is, we will know whether it is a developing country or a MEDC. We think that the most unimportant indicator is the Population Density as it cannot really determine if a country is developing or not, for example: London is extremely dense in terms of population yet they are still one of the most developed cities in the world. We think that the Literacy Rate and the Infant Mortality Rate as the second most important as with these two statistics, we can determine how developed the country is education-wise and health care-wise. These two factors are extremely important factors in measuring development. We think that the Number of People Per Doctor, Percentage of Population with Access to Clean Water and Population Growth Rates are not that important as if we know about the Infant Mortality Rate, we will have an idea of how the health care is like. The Number of People Per Doctor is also not really effective if the doctor is not effective or does not have access to proper health care. The Percentage of Population with Access to Clean Water is quite important but it doesn't play such a big role as the Literacy Rates or the Infant Mortality Rate. Population Growth Rate is quite important as we will know whether the country's population is decreasing or increasing but we feel that it is not as important as the top few. We feel that Percentage of Population Living in Urban Areas and Percentage of People Employed in Agriculture aren't that important because even though they show how developed one country is, it doesn't show it as obviously as the GNP. We didn't use the Car Ownership indicator because we felt that there were better ways of saying how rich a country is. We think there are other important indicators, particularly Life Expectancy, Birth Rate, Death Rate and Food Consumption that will make a difference as they will measure whether the countries are developing or not. I felt that it was a bit hard to make decisions as a group as sometimes the group either have a lot of conflicting ideas or have no ideas at all, which makes it very sophisicated.