Download Economic groupings (1) - School

Global Groupings
Lesson Aims:
• To know the various ways geographers classify
and categorise nations according to their
wealth and power.
Global disparities
• There are great differences in wealth in the world
both between countries and within them.
• In recent years these differences have increased.
• This ‘development gap’ can be attributed to
globalisation, with the rich getting richer, whilst
the poor get poorer.
Measuring development
• There are different ways of measuring
development.
• Traditionally this was done by looking at a
countries GDP.
• However looking at a wider range of indicators
can give a more reliable overview of a
countries level of development.
Economic Indicators
• Economic indicators focus on the wealth of a
country. To standardise them
they are
measured in US dollars
Human Indicators
• Human development indicators are used to
assess the well being of a countries
inhabitants.
Your Task
1. Match the development indicators with their
definitions.
2. In a table, sort these development indicators
into either Economic Indicators or Human
development indicators.
Economic Indicators
Human development Indicators
• Gross National Product – the value • Physical quality of life index –
of all the goods and services
made up of life expectancy,
earned by a country including
literacy rates and infant mortality.
companies working abroad.
• Gross Domestic Product – the • Human development Index –
made up of life expectancy,
value of all the goods and services
literacy rates, infant mortality and
earned by a country excluding
also school enrolment.
foreign earnings.
• Per capita – statistics providing an • Human suffering index – made up
average per person
of daily calorie intake, access to
clean water, inflation rate, access
• Purchasing Power Parity – relates
to
communications,
political
average earnings to prices and
freedom and civil rights.
what they will actually buy you.
Global Groupings
• Geographers use to types of grouping to study
nations in a global context.
• These are Economic Groupings and Political
Groupings.
Page 81
Globe book
Economic groupings
• What are LDCs?
• What are NICs?
• What are Ex-Soviet States?
• What are OPECs?
• What are OECDs?
Political groupings (Trade Blocs)
• Trade blocs differ from economic groupings in
two important ways:
1. To trade freely, agreements have to be drawn up
which allow national boundaries to be crossed by
flows of goods, money and sometimes workers – this
requires an amendment of national laws (hence it
can be described as being political)
2. Trade blocs can contain countries at different levels
of development – this allows for a ‘Spatial division of
labour.’
Selected regional trade bloc groupings
Task
• In twos or threes research ONE of the trade
blocs.
• Produce an overview for that trade bloc
including who the member countries are and
what their general purpose is.
• Present your findings as a short powerpoint
presentation for next lesson
Human development Index
• Look at page 75 of the ‘Fish Book’ showing the
Human Development data for 2006.
• Produce an annotated World map of the
information shown and the trends since the
1990’s linking the bullet points to the map.
Human development Index
• Complete some research on how the Human
Development Index varies globally using the most
recent data.
• Find the latest data to help produce a league table
of ‘winners’ and ‘losers’.
• Which countries are at the top? Which are at the
bottom?
• Do you notice anything about the spatial distribution
of these countries?
• How has the situation changed from 2006?