Unit 4: Development Economics: My country is better than your country!

This website is an excellent addition to the many online resources available for teaching development economics. Using 10 indicators, it allows any two countries to go “head to head” to see which is the better place to live. It is superb for reinforcing evaluation skills as students can discuss whether the final score is a fair reflection or whether some indicators should be given more weight than others.

Click to access excellent link.

In addition to comparing developing to developed economies, it is a great website for encouraging some class banter as you compare countries that your students may be originally from or have links with. The colour coding of the website makes it easy to see which indicator is more positive or negative although some could be debated, for example electricity use is obviously going to be less in developing countries. And birth rate is given a blue coding as it can be difficult to distinguish between too low, the right amount, or too high and any judgement would be normative anyway. Each indicator can then be further explored for more information, including the source.

Putting in New Zealand against the UK, I was surprised (perhaps I shouldn’t have been) to find out we were on the losing side - six to four. Definitely the need for some evaluation on the relative weights of the indicators!

Needing some reassurance that there are countries worse off, I decided to go for Mali and that was a comfortable six to three victory - but how I wish we used 99% less oil!