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As discussed earlier, Bangladesh is one of the world’s poorest and least developed countries, which obviously has a wide range of consequences for the population in terms of its health, educational level, and quality of life. Those consequences are also reflected in the population’s impact on the environment. Compared with the average American, a Bangladeshi citizen uses far fewer resources. He eats less meat, requires less electricity, and is less likely to throw out an old cell phone in order to buy the latest model. Still, because of Bangladesh’s high population density, the population’s local impact on its surroundings has already been significant: polluted water supplies, dirty air, and vanishing farmland.

Development, therefore, is a double-edged sword with the potential to raise the standard of living while also threatening future prosperity through the depletion of resources. To some extent, this is happening in Bangladesh. As poverty has declined from 57% of the population in 1992 to 32% in 2010, the average Bangladeshi has had a larger impact on the environment. This means that understanding the impact of a population on the environment requires an accurate measurement of that population’s level of development.

When it comes to development, the basic currency is money: how much people make and how much they spend. After all, the more money they have available, the more choices they have over the lives they lead. Economists typically compare countries based on their gross domestic product, or GDP, which is the total market value of all the goods and services produced within the borders of a nation during a given year. To compare economic conditions among countries, we divide GDP by population size, resulting in per capita GDP. As shown in Figure 5.10, per capita GDP is over 100 times higher in countries with the highest levels of development compared to those with the lowest development. Bangladesh has a per capita GDP of $1,883, which puts it above quite a few African countries, but far below the $49,965 per capita GDP of the United States. Countries with a low GDP generally have a lower cost of living. However, importing manufactured goods and food from richer countries can be a challenge.

To take a closer look at what money really means for development, it’s often useful to examine population statistics. For instance, life expectancy at birth, the predicted average life span of individuals born during a particular year, reflects the state of health in different regions and countries. In highly developed countries, life expectancy at birth averages 80 years. Compare that with many countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Afghanistan, where people are expected to die by their early to mid-50s. In Africa, this reflects the ravages of AIDS in many populations, while in Afghanistan, it might be due to poor sanitation, minimal access to medical care, and decades of war.

Another measure of health is child mortality rate, the number of children per 1,000 live births that die before reaching 5 years of age. The level of child mortality can be as much as 20 times higher in the poorest countries than in the richest ones (Figure 5.11).

The poorest countries often have the worst educational systems, and many children never learn to read. Lack of educational opportunities may be one of the key impediments to improving the lives of people in such countries, while high levels of literacy and commitment to education are essential to sustaining high levels of development in rich countries.

As you might imagine, although a country’s GDP is the engine that drives development, a country’s history and politics also have significant influences. To gauge levels of development, the United Nations (UN) combines health, economic development, and education into the Human Development Index, or HDI. The HDI ranges from 0 to 1.0, a theoretical situation in which the health, education, and economic potential of individuals are all maximized. The HDI uses life expectancy at birth as an indicator of health in a population, average number of years of schooling as an indicator of educational opportunities, and per capita income as a measure of economic development. When the UN evaluated 187 countries in 2011, their HDI values ranged from 0.286 for the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which ranked 187th, to 0.943 for Norway, which ranked 1st (Figure 5.12). Bangladesh ranked 146th.

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