Economic Growth and Development Essay Example
ECONOMIC GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT
Introduction
Economies grow and develop, they expand and advance, and they progress and prosper. There are phases when they decline too, and there are economies that experience continuous decay. If one considers long stretches of human history, one knows that economies (civilizations) disappeared altogether. We will not take into account such long stretches of time. We shall not consider too distant a past either. We will leave them to historians, may be, economic historians.
Let us take a normal view. We shall then accept decline as an occasional, temporary phenomenon. We shall, therefore, use positive terms only. Of the positive terms, which have been used to describe changes as well as to prescribe changes, two have survived. They are growth and development. Because we shall primarily look at nations and countries as economies, and use terms such as ‘economic growth’ and ‘economic development’. We shall often try to distinguish ‘economic’ from ‘noneconomic’ though there are cases where it becomes difficult to do so.
In order to accommodate decline in level, we use phrase ‘negative growth’ and to describe perverse tendencies, we may use words ‘de-development’ or ‘mal development’ though; we will not have occasions to use them.
You may find that, sometimes in many scientific treatises and very often in colloquy, words ‘growth’ and ‘development’ are used in interchangeable fashion. But, normally a distinction is made between the two, particularly in economics literature. It is maintained along the following lines. You might have noticed that the word ‘growth’ is used to describe increase in stature or size. It is used to describe a uni-dimensional change, as in the case of stature of a child or a uniform expansion in all directions, as in the case of size of a balloon. Even when we refer to development of a child, we refer to various dimensions of its personality. When we do not refer to dimensional aspects we use the
Introduction
Economies grow and develop, they expand and advance, and they progress and prosper. There are phases when they decline too, and there are economies that experience continuous decay. If one considers long stretches of human history, one knows that economies (civilizations) disappeared altogether. We will not take into account such long stretches of time. We shall not consider too distant a past either. We will leave them to historians, may be, economic historians.
Let us take a normal view. We shall then accept decline as an occasional, temporary phenomenon. We shall, therefore, use positive terms only. Of the positive terms, which have been used to describe changes as well as to prescribe changes, two have survived. They are growth and development. Because we shall primarily look at nations and countries as economies, and use terms such as ‘economic growth’ and ‘economic development’. We shall often try to distinguish ‘economic’ from ‘noneconomic’ though there are cases where it becomes difficult to do so.
In order to accommodate decline in level, we use phrase ‘negative growth’ and to describe perverse tendencies, we may use words ‘de-development’ or ‘mal development’ though; we will not have occasions to use them.
You may find that, sometimes in many scientific treatises and very often in colloquy, words ‘growth’ and ‘development’ are used in interchangeable fashion. But, normally a distinction is made between the two, particularly in economics literature. It is maintained along the following lines. You might have noticed that the word ‘growth’ is used to describe increase in stature or size. It is used to describe a uni-dimensional change, as in the case of stature of a child or a uniform expansion in all directions, as in the case of size of a balloon. Even when we refer to development of a child, we refer to various dimensions of its personality. When we do not refer to dimensional aspects we use the