Economic Development · 4 question types
Past paper frequency (2018 to 2024)
This topic accounts for approximately 11% of your exam marks.
GDP per capita limitations, HDI components, and living standards comparisons appear regularly in Section B; typically 8 to 12 marks.
A typical 4-mark "why do living standards differ" question rewards four distinct reasons drawn from different categories.
Richer countries can afford more goods, services, healthcare and education. The underlying cause is usually higher productivity (output per worker), driven by:
Countries with good schools, universities and healthcare produce a workforce that is more productive and healthier. Both feed back into still higher productivity, in a virtuous cycle. Conversely, countries with weak education and high disease burden are trapped in low-productivity equilibrium.
Two distinct paths to high living standards:
A country with neither (limited resources and low technology) finds it harder to lift living standards.
Even a country with abundant resources can have low living standards if its institutions are weak (the "resource curse").
Countries with a large dependency ratio (many children and elderly per working-age adult) spread their output thinly. Countries with a healthy working-age share have higher per-capita output. Pop-growth differences also matter: if population grows faster than GDP, GDP per capita falls.