James Cypher exemplifies in his textbook The Process of Economic Development that the gross national income per capita, gross domestic product per capita, human development index, gender inequality index, and Kuznet’s Curve are methods of describing the inequality and poverty of a country. Each method catalogued by Cypher has strengths and weaknesses exhumed in the discussion, and each also applies to the articles from Moon and Dixon and Alesina and Rodrick.
The article by Alesina and Rodrick emanates that economic growth parallels inequality while the article from Moon and Dixon is unfirmed, but does aim towards promotion of the welfare-centric theorists. Cypher begins chapter two with a contest between GNI (Gross National Income) and GDP (Gross Domestic Product) to derive economic growth. GNI is the first method to be detailed. GNI, according to James Cypher, is the vault of all revenue and profit that is gained by people of a country, discarding the framing of country borders.
Cypher exemplifies in chapter two of The Process of Economic Development that GNI’s introductory strength is delineated as investment. Cypher indicated that GNI per capita delineates capital for potential investment. An additional strength exhibited by the GNI statistic and copied by the GDP statistic is the responsiveness. Basically, the GNI and GDP statistics can be reformed using exchange rates to equate a purchasing power parity or Atlas method data figure. However, GNI is also weak according to Cypher due to the oblivion emanated toward household services and products for subsistence farmers and poor citizens.
GDP, similarly, projects the same weakness and does not exemplify capital for investment. A weakness of the GNI can also be delineated from the discussion of China’s HDI ranking on page 60 of Cypher’s text. Essentially, Cypher emanates the following assertion:“… failed to provide a reasonable proxy measure of its level of development” (p. 60). GNI eventually was the spur for the HDI. As will be asserted later, the GNI discards the action of listing the profit deposits into healthcare/life expectancy and education.
Aside from GNI, GDP is defined by Cypher in the following manner: “the annual total value of all income (=value of final output) created within the borders of a country, regardless of whether the ultimate recipients of that income resides within or outside the country” (p. 38). GDP is delineated on page 53 as being the path to describe production of a country. Additionally, Cypher asserted that both GDP and GNI are built of events shriveling social welfare (i. e. military goods and logging on page 50). GDP appears prima facie to be weaker than the GNI due to the application of income.
Apparently, GDP does not elicit the pocket where the income from domestic production is accrued. Also, page sixty-three of Cypher’s text describes a weakness of GDP and GNI. According to this chunk of the text, human development and inequality can ascend when GDP and GNI per capita are restrained from advanced values. Lastly, Cypher exemplifies a concluding weakness of GNI and GDP in the following assertion: “When the gap between the richest and poorest is quite wide… the average per capita GDP or GNI should be interpreted with great caution” (p. 7).
The first method of describing inequality and poverty delineated by the text after the discussion on GNI and GDP is the human development index. According to Cypher’s literature, the HDI is the data figure from 0-1 that exudes what an economy has accomplished. Cypher asserts that the HDI creates an addendum to GNI per capita through the labels primary education, social security, and healthcare. Earlier in chapter two, Cypher manufactured a catalogue of development indicators before dissecting the economic per capita averages of GNI and GDP.
Prior to the HDI definition, Cypher projected that GNI and GDP do not build the statistic with the household outputs. Cypher emanated on page 57 that the HDI catalogues transactions of the household outputs he elicited prior, which is a substantive strength of HDI. A possible strength of the HDI is its comradery to the GNI. The chunk of chapter two incorporating the HDI seems to delineate that the HDI projects what is purchased with the money available for investment, which was the strength of the GNI measure.
The HDI exemplifies the country’s accrual of money in the pockets of income, education, and life expectancy (i. . health care). However, Cypher does indicate that the HDI has two weaknesses on pages 62-63. The first weakness Cypher asserts is the scattering of income, education, and health care in pertinence to socioeconomic strata. Cypher then discussed that this weakness was the causal variable for the Inequality-Adjusted Human Development Index and asserts that countries like Bangladesh and Pakistan transferred spots after this HDI amendment was utilized. The second weakness that Cypher promotes is that of failure to delineate societal actions of the poorest cluster of society.
Similar to the l-AHDI, this weakness was the causal variable for the multidimensional poverty index. The definition of this in the dialogue of Cypher is “to measure both the range (or extent) of poverty and the depth of poverty” (p. 63). It is documented on page 63 that promising values of the MPI are stated by the UNDP as low, and it is also described that ten criteria extract the poorest civilians from the HDI value before this index. The second method for describing inequality and poverty asserted by the text after the HDI is the Gender Inequality Index.
Page 61 of the textbook emanates that the Gender Inequality Index is almost like a gender specific HDI. The GIl asserts what women and men have built up from the segments of the HDI equation (i. e. social security, education, etc… ). Basically, the Gll seems to be how women and men have both solved the HDI equation with the average GNI per capita. The Gll states a statistical integer that is backwards in comparison to the HDI. The ascension of the GIl integer is asserted as higher nonattainment while the ascension of the HDI is asserted as societally fortuitous.
According to the text, the GlI was gender division of the HDI and the Multidimensional poverty index was a poverty fabrication of the HDI. Cypher indicated earlier in chapter two that the HDI narrowly focused on life expectancy, social security, and education aside from income per capita. The HDI washed away the poverty and gender calculations in the HDI statistic, and the gender inequality index as well as the multidimensional poverty index were fabricated to define the HDI with more segments and respond to the weaknesses promoted.