development and our place in it
20 Mar 07
I’ve been reading up on development and paying close attention to Philippine rankings in the many lists available. Was surprised to see we’re not as sunken as I thought… citing two rankings below, from wikipedia:
Four categories of development:
- Developed countries, and their dependencies
- Countries with an economy consistently and fairly strongly developing over a longer period: the People’s Republic of China (excluding Hong Kong and Macau), Mexico, Brazil, India, Pakistan, South Africa, Iran, Turkey, the Philippines, Egypt, much of South America, several of the Persian Gulf States, Malaysia, Thailand, the countries of the former Warsaw Pact and others.
- Countries with an inconsistent record of development: most countries in Africa, Central America, and the Caribbean (excepting Jamaica, in category 2, and Puerto Rico); much of the Arab world; also much of Southeast Asia, except Singapore (category 1), the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Thailand (all category 2). 76% of the world’s countries fall under this category.
- Countries with long-term civil war or large-scale breakdown of rule of law or non-development-oriented dictatorship (“failed states”) (e.g. Haiti, Somalia, Sudan, Myanmar, North Korea); they sometimes also have low resources. The term “developing nation” is not a label to assign a specific, similar type of problem. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developing_country
In the list of countries by Human Development Index, the Philippines belongs to the Medium bracket, with a ranking of 84 out of 177 countries. We are higher than Vietnam, Indonesia, and India, based on the three basic dimensions of human development:
- A long and healthy life, as measured by life expectancy at birth.
- Knowledge, as measured by the adult literacy rate (with two-thirds weight) and the combined primary, secondary, and tertiary gross enrollment ratio (with one-third weight).
- A decent standard of living, as measured by the log of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita at purchasing power parity (PPP) in USD.
Key realization: we’re not in bad a shape as most of us think! BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ! I’ve been so used to thinking of us as dirt poor, that we’re such victims, kawawa naman tayo, but here it is– relative to the rest of the world, we have a lot to be thankful for. And it’s upon us, our generation, to respond to this situation. Because the operative word is yet. We’re not in a critical state YET.
