Development a Multidimensional Concept

It was once a worldwide belief that development is primarily concerned with economic growth, meaning that once there was economic growth a country would develop. This was so firmly believed that a number of theories, which were put across to explain development and how to achieve development, such as modernization theory, and dependency theory centered on economic growth being the key factor in development. There is no one definition of development, as persons have different interpretations of development. In Portest’s and Kincaid’s interpretation of development, they stated that it should involve a reduction in unemployment and the extension of fundamental rights and freedoms for the population. Another definition of development, according to Garrett Nagle, is a number of characteristics such as demographic change, economic growth, increased use of resources, modernization, higher levels of technology and political freedom. Economic growth, which is measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP), occurs when there is an increase in GDP over the previous year.
Although the assumption that development is primarily concerned with economic growth is incorrect, it is understood why this assumption was made in the first place. All countries that are now termed developed have experienced more or less consistent economic growth to their reaching to the point of developed. In addition, all of the ‘developed’ countries have high GDPs, which are considerably greater than developing countries’. For example, Caribbean neighbor, the United States of America, in the year 2000 had a GDP per capita of US$ 34, 142, while Caribbean island, Jamaica, in that same year had a GDP per capita of US$ 3,064. GDP per capita refers to the amount of money each person supposedly earns or is spent on each person, when the total population divides the GDP.
Another argument that supports development as being solely concerned with economic growth, is that resources needed for development come at a