As we mentioned in class, you might enjoy playing around with the Gapminder data. Specifically, check out the country-specific development trajectories. In class we saw why health matters for development by looking at the case of Swaziland.
A few others we did not have time to cover but that you might find interesting:
Why political context matters for development? Check out the last 50 years for Kenya, Congo and Vietnman. What do think explains the gains and losses in these cases?
Why political systems matter for development? Check out the different trajectories that India and China have been on. What do you think explains why one country can have substantial health gains without great increases in income and others do not?
I mentioned Equatorial Guinea: why do you think their GDP/capita has improved so radically? Do you think this data shows that the typical person in Equatorial Guinea is better off than 20 years ago? If not, why not?
Please feel free to post responses to any of these questions on the blog. Also, let us know if you have found other countries that provide better examples for understanding these questions or other questions that you think this data allows us to explore about the context in which development does (or does not) happen. We will discuss the most interesting responses in class next week.
--Prof. Bugg-Levine
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