scholarly journals DEMOCRACY AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA: A FRIEND OR FOE?

Author(s):  
Semyalo Moses ◽  
Xu Yuanwang

The study assessed the impact of democracy on economic development in Africa from 1996 to 2017 for a panel study of 50 African countries. The study employed panel methodologies such as panel stepwise regression, generalized linear model, and Arellano-Bond dynamic panel data GMM (two-step) and censored Tobit regression methods for its robustness inference. The study found a negative and strong statistically significant relationship between democracy and economic development in Africa. Whereas the rule of law negatively relates to economic growth and voice and accountability also relates at a statistical significance level of 1% across all the methods used for the data analysis. İn the wake to achieve higher economic development, one variable critically showed promising thus human development index. The human development index encompasses a composite measure of life expectancy at birth, per capita income indicators, and level of education in every country. KEYWORDS: Democracy; Economic development; Rule of law; Voice and Accountability; Corruption control

Author(s):  
Volkan Öngel ◽  
İlyas Sözen ◽  
Ahmet Alkan Çelik

Economic development and growth had been the most important target among all goverments throughout the history. In this respect, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan in Middle Asian Region had chosen development as primary target in 20 years time after their independence. Human capital is the leading factor to maintain economic development and growth. Development and growth terms over which different meanings and concepts were imposed in time, necessitated several political economic alterations. Before 1970’s, increase in income had been sufficient criterion for the development of a government. But nowadays economic development incorporates factors such as life expectancy at birth, school enrolment ratio, literancy rate, gender discrimination, poverty alleviation, equal distribution of income beyond economic growth. Herewith this change political preference and priorities has started to differentiate. The aim of this study is to discuss human development index (HDI) data of 5 Middle Asian countries in 2010 and changes in HDI in years after their independence. Comparisan between Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and HDI rates are also performed within this analysis. This study consists of data of 5 Middle Asian countries between years 1990-2010. Basic, retrospective, illustrative library method is used as the study method. In conclusion, we find that increase in GDP did not reflect over HDI in Middle Asian Countries within 20-years period.


The study examined the role played by HCD in the economic development of Kenya between 2002 and 2014 by interrogating the development models adopted by South Korea and Singapore as a benchmark to determine the gaps in the model adopted by Kenya. Despite Kenya, Singapore and South Korea exhibiting similar income levels in the 1960s, the gap between Kenya’s economic growth and those of South Korea and Singapore has widened tremendously since independence in 1963. Kenya has recorded low Gross Domestic Product (GDP) compared to the two Asian countries. The researcher relied on secondary data sourced from national, regional and international websites and organizations. The data collected was corroborated with data sourced from government offices and websites. Data sets from the three countries was used to examine the extent to which HCD practices affect economic growth for the purposes of deriving the best HCD practices from South Korea and Singapore that influence economic growth. The design therefore necessitated causality analysis using the Granger Causality Test and correlational and regression analysis that facilitated the measurement, development and assessment of the statistical significance of the causal relationships among the study variables. The model variables included GDP as the response variable explained by six predictor variables; government expenditure on education, human development index, average years of schooling as a proxy for percentage of population that has attained education, patents filed by the countries, government effectiveness and government expenditure on research and development. Findings revealed that HCD had a great influence on economic development of a country. Findings further revealed that whereas human development index was found to be positively correlated to economic growth in South Korea and Singapore, it was negatively (inversely) correlated to economic growth in Kenya. To achieve sustained economic growth, the study recommends that the provision of education be strengthened to ensure successful implementation of Competency Based Curriculum with the government laying more emphasis on applied R&D.


2016 ◽  
Vol 55 (4I-II) ◽  
pp. 657-673
Author(s):  
Karim Khan ◽  
Saima Batool ◽  
Anwar Shah

Since the recent emphasis on institutions for overall economic development of the countries, the research in this strand has expanded enormously. In this study, we want to see the impact of political institutions on economic development in pure cross-country setting. We take the Human Development Index (HDI) as a measure of economic development and use two alternative measures of dictatorship. We find that dictatorship is adversely affecting economic development in our sample of 92 countries. For instance, transition from extreme dictatorship to ideal democracy would increase HDI by 17 percent. Moreover, our results are robust to alternative specifications and the problems of endogeneity and reverse causation as is shown by the results of 2 Stages Least Squares (2SLS). JEL Classification: P16, H11, H41, H42 Keywords: Economic Development, Human Development Index, Dictatorship


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriel Souza Suzart ◽  
Ingrid Sanchez ◽  
Daniel Guimarães ◽  
Pedro Augusto Assis Lopes ◽  
Pedro Antonio Pereira de Jesus

Background: Stroke outcomes depend somehow on the time taken from the symptoms onset until arrival to the specialized service. However, as it lacks literature exploring the impact of socio-demographics factors on this time, we investigated the association between Human Development Index and delay on arrival to specialized service. Design and setting: Cross-sectional study from a prospective cohort (PMID=33719516) at Hospital Geral Roberto Santos. Methods: From a total of 454 stroke patients, 156 were included in this study because they had registered address, time of admission and of symptoms onset. Patients had HDI defined by their address and were grouped into HDI categories. Results: In our sample, 57 (36,5%) individuals had medium HDI, 70 (44,9%) high HDI and 29 (18,6%) very high HDI. Very high HDI patients’ delay (2:01; 1:22-2:57) was lower than high HDI (3:05; 2:05-5:26) and medium HDI (2:25;1:45-4:04) patients. There was statistical significance comparing these groups (X²=11,41;p<0,05), but a post-hoc test revealed statistical difference just between the very high HDI and high HDI groups (p<0.05). Conclusions: We expected to find a direct relation between delay on arrival to the stroke service and HDI categories. However, this was not observed. *Authors contributed equally.


Global Heart ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. e62
Author(s):  
R.M.D.A. Xavier ◽  
V.M.P. Azevedo ◽  
R.E. Muller ◽  
F.F. Nascimento ◽  
C.M. Aquino ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Stephen Broadberry ◽  
Leigh Gardner

ABSTRACTRecent advances in historical national accounting have allowed for global comparisons of GDPper capitaacross space and time. Critics have argued that GDPper capitafails to capture adequately the multi-dimensional nature of welfare, and have developed alternative measures such as the human development index. Whilst recognising that these wider indicators provide an appropriate way of assessing levels of welfare, we argue that GDPper capitaremains a more appropriate measure for assessing development potential, focussing on production possibilities and the sustainability of consumption. Twentieth-century Africa and pre-industrial Europe are used to show how such data can guide reciprocal comparisons to provide insights into the process of development on both continents.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 251
Author(s):  
Sabah Faihan Mahmood ◽  
Yassen Taha Mahmood

      Human Development aims to   enlarge choices in front of people by improving the level of health, education, and income; this means that this process will upgrade both the economic and social development.In other words, human development aimes to raise the average of age and this requires the advancement of the health aspect, raise the level of knowledge and this requires the advancement of  the educational aspect of all kinds., and raise the standard of living, and this requires the advancement of the economic aspect by providing the necessary jobs and promote economic activities.      The study focus on the relationship between education and human development which has great importance as a mean to determine the impact of education on human development. The research seeks to achieve a set of objectives, including:        Review  the concept of human development and its basic elements, shed light on the reality of development in Iraq and follow the path of its development, and find out the role of education in influencing human development through the changes taking place in it and its impact on increase or decrease  human development index during the period of the research.       The research found set of   results, the most important were the important effect of the education index on the level of human development index represented by HDI.  Iraq had a good educational system in the eighties and nineties, reaching good education index value for the year (1990) which was (0.890), making the human development index in Iraq in the highest level and the value of the Human Development Index (0.759) in the first report issued by the United Nations in the year (1990). when the education index fall back there was negatively impact on the value of human development  index in Iraq Directory, so when the education index value became (0.721) , the value of the Human Development Index  was  (0.590) in the year 2011 . This means that the value of the human development index decrease in recent years, although of improvement in the level of health, and the average per capita GDP in Iraq, and this illustrates the significant role of education on the human development process.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 5
Author(s):  
Mulia Simatupang

ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper in to assess the impact of financial inclusion and  government expenditures in education and health sectors in order to increase human development index. Government expenditures has important role to support economic growth and welfare for its people. Fiscal policy expenditures in education and health sectors are kind of significant government policy to increase human development. It is believed that financial inclusion has also important role  to reduce poverty and indirectly increase human development index. Financial inclusion  has positive impacts to human development index component along with government  expenditures in education and health sector. In the years ahead, The Government should prioritize and increase budget in order to increase human  resources quality in Indonesia.


2013 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-37
Author(s):  
Vladislavs Vesperis

Abstract In the context of the global financial-economic crisis it becomes important to find a stronger base for assessment of the socio-economic development and, in particular, search for better indicators. Therefore, the hypothesis is set that it is necessary to develop the EU Development Index, which will provide better assessment of an on-going socio-economic change. The objective of the article is to describe the EU Development Index calculation results and compare them with the Human Development Index values for each Member state of the EU. Ranking list of the EU Member States according to the Human Development Index values did not change substantially, suggesting that the Human Development Index inadequately responds to key socioenvironmental changes that occurred during the global financial economic crisis. At the same time, a number of countries show a sharp decline of the EU development index values, reflecting the impact of global economic crisis, while some countries with a high level of public debt and low confidence of the financial markets have remained in their positions by the both indexes in the year 2009. However, these countries most probably will be forced to make the considerable fiscal discipline measures, which inevitably will have an impact on GDP and income indicators in these countries, therefore their rankings in the coming years will deteriorate. Completely impartial assessment will be possible when countries with high debt levels will have balanced their budgets and economic growth will be based mostly on their own income and production instead of external cash flows and investment entering the country. It can be concluded that EU Development Index allows, in a more equitable fashion, to assess disparities of the EU Member States by development level and more rapidly reflect the rapid socio-economic change.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document