Essay about economic development

Submitted By agucho08
Words: 1653
Pages: 7

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT FIRST ASSIGNMENT

IDPM 60711

Essay: 30% of mark
Please write one essay of 1500 words that answers the following question:

Does Economic Growth lead to Poverty Alleviation? Please compare and contrast very briefly the experiences of China, India and Brazil. What lessons can an African country of your choice learn from these experiences?

STUDENT ID # 8734897

INTRODUCTION:
Since economic growth affects directly or indirectly the poverty in some countries, there are many factors to consider, such as education, employment, social equality, modernization, and how other services and products can be delivered by governments via health system. It can be determined, by looking at these criteria, whether economic growth has been reached, and whether it could lead to poverty alleviation. According to Todaro and Smith (2012, p. 14) development is traditionally measured by levels and rates of growth of "real" per capita gross national income (GNI) are then used to rate the overall economic well-being of a population.
Identifying measures that could lead to more accurate information is the challenge for researchers, while the most important objective for the governments is to pursue new policies and reforms to reduce poverty in their countries. This paper shows that economic growth is associated with poverty alleviation, and how macroeconomics reforms in some developing countries have led to their development. The latter is achieved by comparing the cases of China, India, and Brazil, and also discussing how these public policies could be applied to other developing countries, such as Cameroon.
Most of the countries that achieve economic growth exhibit some inequality in their distributions. For example, of income, which reflects on the Lorenz curve, as Ray (1998, p. 184) states that it provides a pictorial representation of the degree of inequality in a society. However, sometimes this does not produce useful information for policy makers. Another tool is the Gini coefficient numerical measure, which according to Todaro and Smith (2012, p. 777), graphically divides the area between the perfect equality ranging from zero (perfect equality) to one (perfect inequality).
I think it is difficult to measure inequality; however, the basic indicators to research are income, health, and education. There are also growth models such as the Harrod-Domar; and the Solow Neoclassical, for which Robert Solow of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology received the Nobel Prize, is probably the best known model of economic growth (Todaro & Smith, p. 146, 2012). Based on these economic models, researchers could determine if countries could maintain economic growth by looking their statistical facts. Inequality represents one challenge for the international organizations that fight to eradicate poverty, such as the United Nations initiative in 2000 to adopt the Millennium Development Goals agenda for developing countries (UNDP, 2013).
BRAZIL, INDIA, AND CHINA:
The relationship between growth and poverty in these countries has a marked tendency of inequality, especially in Brazil. As discussed by Ravallion (2009), in China and India growth was accompanied by substantial reductions of absolute poverty measured in terms of income or consumption but geographically uneven perhaps in other dimensions too.
In the first case, Brazil, based on studies regarding its social inequality and divisions, still has a way to go to accomplish genuine development. It represents a major growth economy compared to other Latin American countries, but even though it has the largest population, it took time and radical reforms within the government (most notoriously with President Lula da Silva) to determine a healthy path to sustainable development.
Many areas in the country showed improvement, such as education, health, agriculture, technology, and most importantly social welfare. For example, in the education and