Question

What makes a nation successful? Can it be measured as a high GDP, or GDP growth rate or is it better measured as high GDP per capita? Perhaps there are other ways to understand happiness and the health of a nation. What is the best method to measure the health of a nation?

300 words, length of your comments: 100 words.

Answer 1

Economic growth evaluates the development of the economy of a country. Today, by raising gross domestic product, or GDP, it is most commonly evaluated by policymakers and scholars alike. This indicator estimates the added value in a country that represents the total value of all goods and services produced in a country minus the value of the goods and services needed to produce them. It is common for the population of a country to divide this indicator to better assess how productive and developed an economy is–per capita GDP.

Today, the predominance of GDP as a measure of economic growth is partially because the output of products and services is simpler to quantify than other welfare accomplishments can be measured by a multidimensional index. Precisely for this reason, GDP alone is not an appropriate gage of the growth of a country. Development is a multi-dimensional notion involving not only an financial dimension but also social, ecological and emotional dimensions.

One extended index that aims to evaluate the multi-dimensional aspect of growth is the Human Development Index (HDI), developed by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). The index was created by Mahbud ul Haq and Amartya Sen, which is better adapted to monitor the progress not only of the wealthy but also of the bad countries.

The Human Capital Index (HCI) was introduced by the World Bank on 11 October 2018. This newly generated index ranks the performance of 157 nations on a set of four indices of health and education based on an assessment of the economic productivity lost owing to bad social results. The main advantage is that it focuses on results, rather than inputs, analogous to the Social Progress Index (SPI) and contrary to GDP. For instance, instructional quality is weighted more properly against years of education as measured by real adjusted teaching.

The SPI is a refinement of the HDI as it increases the number of composite indicators from just four to fifty-four in a wide range of areas, including basic human needs, well-being foundations, and opportunities for progress. This index is therefore capable of synthesizing the most relevant aspects of development. Access to water and hygiene, educational and health results, government crime, housing, information access, and communication, for instance. Of course, the SPI's primary drawback is its relatively big complexity and absence of practicality in informing policy making.