Posts tagged economic indicators
Visualise the impact of Asia’s Rapid Growth
Sep 6th
Image: bbc
This interactive, hosted on bbc.co.uk, is good for studies in Geography, Economics, and more. It is a quick way into the type of visual data offered by Gapminder.org
The interactive dataset lets the user track a number of Asian countries as their wealth / income grows between 1960 and 2006, and compares the changes of one other key development variable – choose from Health, Education, Life Expectancy and Energy.
With it, you get to see how the sample of countries compare to both the UK and USA. Click on each country to switch them on.
Look, for example, at how South Korea’s average years of education for women aged 15-44 fares.
Link:
In graphics: Rising Asia hosted on bbc.co.uk
The World Scaled Down to A Village of 100
Nov 28th
Just came across this video, based on what is now a widely-read summary of some key demographic and economic statistics. These statistics do need to be verified, as the opening shot states, if not for any other reason than the age of the data. This notion of the world as a village of 100 (and the associated data) first emerged in the early 1990s.
As David Truss argues, this could be really useful for cross-curricular discussion. I’ve used the Village of 100 idea a few times – in Geography, Economics and as part of an assembly. I first received an email with this idea in 1998, and used some of it when visiting a Secondary School in southern Ghana in 2003. Teaching a Geography class of nearly 70 students, I tried to apply the same concept for some of the issues covered by asking the appropriate proportion of the class to stand up. The Ghanaian students were blown away by the proportion of their class that would live in Asia (having guessed Africa and Europe to carry the highest populations, by far). The ICT teacher at that school (who commanded a suite of 16 computers for a school of c. 2,500 students) was fascinated by the internet access statistic.
For another way of visualising global economic inequality (which features in the Village of 100 idea), I highly recommend this website:
Update:
This impressive and simple website helps you to make quick comparisons between your own country and any other – this can call up statistics that call to mind the inequality depicted in the Village of 100. Watch out for the adverts though:
The Economic Health Of A Country
Aug 26th
[License: Some rights reserved by juhansonin]
As we begin to explore macroeconomics, it is worth thinking about some of the key things that we will be looking at and how they apply to a real life country.
Economists agree that there are four main macroeconomic goals which most governments consider when managing their economy (and some governments, as we know, manage their economies more directly than others). The four macroeconomic goals are:
1) Growth (an increase in the country’s total output)
2) Low Unemployment (or put another way, high employment)
3) Stable General Price Level (while it is accepted that a small amount inflation is manageable, both high inflation and deflation are seen to be undesirable).
4) A Healthy Balance of Payments (for example, importing more goods and services than those that a country exports can be seen to be undesirable in the long run).
Sometimes, a fifth macroeconomic goal is added, although we should recognise that it clearly appears to be of variable importance to the different governments of the world:
5) Equity (an even distribution of wealth within the country)
There are other macroeconomic goals that are sometimes considered which you may come across in your research.
A good research task is to consider these macroeconomic goals for a country and gather data on a number of economic indicators for your country. Examples of such indicators include:
- GDP and / or GNP
- GDP per capita / and or GNP per capita
- Rates of Inflation
- Interest Rates
- Unemployment Levels
- Balance of Trade (Imports versus Exports)
- Distribution of Wealth
You could choose a country that has signed up to the OECD. What does that stand for, and why would a country want to belong to this organisation?
Look at the economic health for your chosen country over the past ten years. Gather text, images and even video links to support your findings. If you can, try to see why they changes but don’t worry about this too much – this can be complicated and we haven’t even studied the theory yet.
A great way to present your findings would be to produce a ‘glog’ or online poster. You can host your glogs at http://www.glogster.com/ and teachers can even set up accounts for their class here: http://edu.glogster.com/
Make your glog as informative as possible. Try to mix up text, images, graphs and tables and possible short video clips (from youtube for example). Remember to give a title and explain your chosen country’s membership of the OECD.
