To What Extent Can Data Influence Our Perception of How Developed a Country Is?
Emmy Egulu
To what extent can data influence our perception of how developed a country is?
According to the Oxford dictionary, data is “facts and statistics collected together for reference or analysis,”[1] Society tends to think that the western world or MEDC’s are more developed than the eastern world or LEDC’s generally but this information can be resulted to being misleading or inconsistent. I think data has an influence on how we perceive a country by whether or not it is developed from statistics like birth rate, death rate, life expectancy, etc…
Data has weaknesses… We rely on data so much that we don’t know what is real or not. This changes our perception on how developed a country is. We underrate Sub-Saharan Africa because of the problems such as Tsetse, Malaria, sickle cell anemia [2], etc but we do not consider that stated by the UNDP [3], sub Saharan Africa has portrayed strong levels of economic growth and despite the global economic crisis, these countries grew more than 5% in 2011. A birth rate could aid an economy. In addition Asia (western world) has been having rapid economical and social changes. Even in schools, there is a stream on Economic and Social change and in particular Japan having an aging population because of health expenditures (access to health care) [4]. By 2025, 49% of the total population will live over 75 because of the government financing health care. So when data is collected we really have to analyze the data before considering the development of the country [5]. Changing topic, the mainstream thought of birth rate is that LEDC’s have a higher rate, but truth is, not necessarily. Malthus theory states that LEDC’s will have an increasing population, but Turkey, a Western country has had over 1 million registered births in 2010 and in Sri Lanka [6], a eastern county has had less than half, 386,000 babies in 2010 [7]; United nations estimates.
Data has strengths... An economy relies on data. Statistics help us know how
To what extent can data influence our perception of how developed a country is?
According to the Oxford dictionary, data is “facts and statistics collected together for reference or analysis,”[1] Society tends to think that the western world or MEDC’s are more developed than the eastern world or LEDC’s generally but this information can be resulted to being misleading or inconsistent. I think data has an influence on how we perceive a country by whether or not it is developed from statistics like birth rate, death rate, life expectancy, etc…
Data has weaknesses… We rely on data so much that we don’t know what is real or not. This changes our perception on how developed a country is. We underrate Sub-Saharan Africa because of the problems such as Tsetse, Malaria, sickle cell anemia [2], etc but we do not consider that stated by the UNDP [3], sub Saharan Africa has portrayed strong levels of economic growth and despite the global economic crisis, these countries grew more than 5% in 2011. A birth rate could aid an economy. In addition Asia (western world) has been having rapid economical and social changes. Even in schools, there is a stream on Economic and Social change and in particular Japan having an aging population because of health expenditures (access to health care) [4]. By 2025, 49% of the total population will live over 75 because of the government financing health care. So when data is collected we really have to analyze the data before considering the development of the country [5]. Changing topic, the mainstream thought of birth rate is that LEDC’s have a higher rate, but truth is, not necessarily. Malthus theory states that LEDC’s will have an increasing population, but Turkey, a Western country has had over 1 million registered births in 2010 and in Sri Lanka [6], a eastern county has had less than half, 386,000 babies in 2010 [7]; United nations estimates.
Data has strengths... An economy relies on data. Statistics help us know how