Economic Development - Essay Example

Economic development Economic development refers to a community’s or policy makers’ set of sustained and concerted actions aimed at promoting the economic wellbeing and standard of living of a given area. These actions entail developing environmental sustainability, regional competitiveness, social inclusion, safety, health and literacy. As mentioned above, economic development focuses on improvements of certain indicators such as literacy levels. In short, economic development aims at having a sound local economy that attracts investment, creates employment opportunities for the people, increases the tax base and generates more revenue (Cypher and James, pg. 10).For a country to be termed as developed economically, and then there are conditions that need to be absent.

A country must, therefore, focus on poverty reduction and improving on the life expectancy of its citizens. Attaining public health is essentially another goal of economic development. The goals of economic development have changed over time. Due to globalization, nations have resulted to aiming at remaining at the top of the food chain. Competition has forced economic development to turn to a struggle to retain businesses (Cypher and James, pg. 32).Some characteristics of low-income countries include:1.

Poverty is widespreadMost people living in low-income countries, also known as developing worlds’ live under the poverty line. There are some reasons why this poverty is widespread and, unfortunately, why these people continue in that vicious cycle. To begin with, most developing countries depend on agriculture as their main economic activity. There is nothing wrong with agriculture, but, when there are no machines and no skilled labor in farms, the total output in these farms is significantly low.

This means that there is barely any surplus that can be sold, and the farmers are subsistent farmers (Cypher and James, pg. 7). 2. Poor healthOne goal of economic development is to ensure that public health is maintained at the highest level possible. Looking at most low-income nations, we realize that they not only have fewer skills in terms of combating diseases, but less economic power to promote infant and maternal health. This, in other words, means that their life expectancy is very low.

Consider a country such as Tanzania with an average life expectancy of 48 years while countries such as Sweden in Europe have average life expectancy of over 85 years (Cypher and James, pg. 496).Work citedCypher, James M, and James L. Dietz. The Process of Economic Development. London: Routledge, 2009. Print.