Development Goals & Growth Ch.1 Test Bank Answers

CHAPTER 1

What Is Development? From Economic Growth to the Sustainable Development Goals

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does the 2019 fires in the Amazon say about development policies in Brazil?

a) Environmental degradation should be stopped

b) An emphasis on climate change data

c) Indicators of urbanization, infrastructure, and development

d) An emphasis on business interests

e) The complexity of interdependence

2. The modern concept of “development” is often traced back to the Inaugural Address made by which former US president?

a) Harry S. Truman

b) Franklin D. Roosevelt

c) Dwight D. Eisenhower

d) John F. Kennedy

e) Lyndon B. Johnson

3. Which of the following was implied by the term “underdeveloped”?

a) That development is desirable by all

b) The possibility of unlimited economic progress

c) A single, overarching scale to compare nations against each other

d) All of the above

e) None of the above

4. Originally, the concept of a “Third World” represented which of the following?

a) The breakdown of political barriers to development

b) An alternative to dominant world power structures during the Cold War

c) The creation of a dialogue between developing countries

d) A demand for development policies that were fair

e) A pejorative, patronizing term that im­plies a world hierarchy and a single path to development

5. Which of the following is NOT considered one of the original Newly Industrialized Countries (NICs)?

a) Hong Kong

b) Taiwan

c) Singapore

d) Thailand

e) South Korea

6. A country’s status as “developed” or “developing” has conventionally been measured by reference to what?

a) Its literacy rate

b) Its Human Development Index

c) Its Gross Domestic Product

d) Its life expectancy

e) Its level of gender equality

7. Which of the following is NOT associated with the term “Fourth World”?

a) The poorest of the poor countries

b) “Failed states”

c) The internal colonization of Indigenous peoples

d) An alternative political movement of poor country solidarity

e) All of the above are associated with the term

8. Why has the label “Global South” gained favour over other, somewhat misleading, terms?

a) It better incorporates historical and contemporary patters of wealth and power into a loosely geographically defined concept

b) It departs from popular beliefs that poverty and social conditions are still identified with the Third World

c) The label “south” is a better fit to the geographical conditions of poverty

d) The geographical term “south” implies democracy

e) The term “south” is meant as a pejorative

9. What is the reason for measuring purchasing power parity (PPP)?

a) To demonstrate the benefits of “fair trade”

b) To show how developing countries operate under their own economic logic

c) To justify the existence of vast economic inequalities

d) To show the need for land redistribution

e) To compare incomes across countries by accounting for different costs in different economies

10. Development economist Jeffery Sachs argues that since 1820, the gap in GDP per capita between developing and developed countries has increased how many times?

a) Two

b) Five

c) Ten

d) Twenty

e) Fifty

11. The use of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita as a measure of poverty is criticized for its failure to reflect which of the following?

a) Income distribution

b) Purchasing power parity

c) Export rates

d) Poverty levels

e) Employment rates

12. Which of the following is NOT true regarding the distribution of income?

a) It is measured by the Gini coefficient

b) It is measured by comparing the incomes of different strata of society

c) It is very unequal in most developing countries

d) It acts as a constraint on development

e) It is not very important since growth at the top “trickles down” to the poor

13. Which of the following is NOT true of the concept of “social capital”?

a) It refers to the extent to which individuals are willing to cooperate in the pursuit of shared goals

b) It entails the investment of money and resources in social activities

c) It is undermined by the existence of persistent and growing inequality

d) Its absence or erosion may constrain a country’s development potential

e) It is thought to be essential to the growth of a civic democratic culture

14. What is relative poverty?

a) Poverty that does not threaten a person’s daily survival but makes it difficult to participate fully in society

b) Poverty that has a “moderate” impact on living conditions

c) Poverty that places a person below the minimum level of income necessary to meet their basic physical needs

d) Economic hardships that almost all people experience

e) Poverty caused by the lack of family support

15. What is moderate poverty?

a) A condition of economic dissatisfaction with total household income

b) An income level that leads to a kind of poverty that does not threaten physical survival but where an individual may not have the income necessary to fully participate in their soci­ety

c) An income level of US$3.20 per day, where basic human needs are barely met but physical survival is not threatened

d) A situation that exists mostly among the elderly in developing countries

e) A GDP per capita of less than US$5 a day

16. According to the capabilities approach, development should be measured by an individual’s ability to do what?

a) Purchase necessities

b) Make choices that allow them to live their lives in ways they value

c) Purchase a home

d) Participate in the political system

e) Pursue their economic self-interest

17. Which of the following does the Human Development Index NOT measure?

a) Life expectancy at birth

b) Adult literacy rate

c) School enrolment rates

d) Gross domestic product per capita

e) Human gender equality

18. What are the successors to the Millennium Development Goals?

a) The Sustainable Development Goals

b) The Generational Development Goals

c) The Gender Development Goals

d) The Human Development Goals

e) The Post-Millennium Development Goals

19. According to Arturo Escobar, which of the following calls into question the validity of the contemporary development enterprise?

a) Linear progression

b) Colonial roots

c) Environmental degradation

d) Positionality

e) Failure to demonstrate results

20. What is cosmopolitanism?

a) An ethical position that suggests people should be treated differently based on their income

b) An ethical position that holds national boundaries to be highly relevant

c) An ethical position that contends that the state has no obligation to non-citizens

d) An ethical position that argues that some common values apply across humanity and therefore national borders have a low moral importance

e) An ethical position that believes that it is more interesting to live in cities

21. Which of the following is true about rights-based approaches to global justice and poverty?

a) They form the basis for most international law today

b) They justify moral claims on the basis of fundamental entitlement to act or be treated in specific ways

c) They justify moral claims on the basis of fundamental entitlements to act or be treated equally

d) They enshrine individual rights in national constitutions

e) They justify moral claims on the basis of an individual’s rights

22. Peter Singer uses what analogy to ask if frivolous spending is more morally important than the life of humans in the Global South?

a) The Drowning Child Analogy

b) The Analogy of Linear History

c) The Domestic Analogy

d) The Analogy of Comparable Worth

e) The Humanitarian Analogy

23. The neoliberal position in development borrows from the ideas of libertarian Robert Nozick in arguing which of the following?

a) The primacy of collective rights over individual rights

b) The necessity of wealth redistribution

c) The right of individuals to own private property

d) A moral obligation of the state to provide for the poor

e) That a free-market economy is immoral

24. What is positionality?

a) The strategic directions of NGOs

b) The inherent political and social biases of economic development programs

c) The position of conflicting values that exist in economic development programs

d) The social and power relationships in which people are embedded

e) The orientation of an economy for trade and production

25. What is a development tourist?

a) Someone who works as a development consultant and dispenses advice with little knowledge of local conditions

b) Someone who volunteers on development projects when on vacations abroad

c) Someone who develops commercial tourist opportunities in less developed countries

d) Someone who scouts development opportunities

e) Someone who works as a development consultant and dispenses advice with excellent knowledge of local conditions

26. The massive fires seen in 2019 in Brazil are emblematic of international development because:

a) Brazil is in the Global South

b) The native language of Brazil is not English

c) The fires reveal the extreme complexity of international development including issues of culture, climate, and politics

d) Brazil is the most powerful country in South America and exercises great influences over other countries in the region

e) The agricultural and industrial development model in Brazil is an example of efficiency and sustainability

27. The study and practice of international development has as its goal:

a) To understand why so many people are poor and how to increase their economic power

b) To explain the diversity in the world with respect to human well-being

c) To eliminate global poverty by 2030

d) To spread democracy throughout the world

e) To establish neo-colonialism policies worldwide

28. Labelling countries as “First World” or “Third World” can be problematic because:

a) Labels like these imply countries are on similar political and economic paths

b) Labels like these can be seen as pejorative

c) Labels like these can create neo-colonial attitudes on the part of First-World countries

d) Labels like these create dependencies on the part of the Third-World countries for things like aid and foreign assistance

e) All of the above

29. Which of the following is NOT typically seen as an emerging economy?

a) Thailand

b) India

c) South Africa

d) Taiwan

e) Singapore

30. Which of the following would NOT be a valid measure of national or international development?

a) Gross Domestic Product (GDP)

b) GINI Coefficient

c) Number of consumer durables in a country

d) Purchasing Power Parity (PPP)

e) Gross National Income (GNI) per capita

31. Social capital is:

a) a measure of how much individuals are willing to co-operate in the pursuit of shared goals

b) another term for GDP

c) a measure of civil unrest in a society

d) a measure of how many people participate in social activities in a given community

e) a measure of how many people are excluded from social activities in a given community

32. Amartya Sen’s Capability Model for analyzing development was critical because it showed:

a) the importance of measures of development that go beyond GDP per capita

b) how poor countries cannot develop without democracy

c) how global climate change affected developing nations

d) that current models in international development are just examples of neo-colonialism

e) why people with relatively middle incomes could still have relatively high birth rates

33. In the context of international development, the term “development” is a contested idea because many believe:

a) it is a form of neo-colonialism

b) it legitimates the global expansion of capitalism

c) so-called developed countries benefit more from international development than the developing countries do

d) all of the above

e) none of the above

34. The Millennium Development Goals were ground-breaking because:

a) they emerged in 2000 thus heralding a new beginning

b) they focused on poverty reduction, were simple, measurable, and had deadlines associated with them

c) they were developed through international consultations

d) they focused on democracy and human rights

e) they gave way to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

35. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) differed from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in the following important ways:

a) the SDGs focus on inequality; climate change; and a global partnership with developing economies

b) the SDGs employed the principles of “leave no one behind”

c) the SDGs emphasized a holistic view of development rather than focusing on single issues like economics

d) all of the above

e) none of the above

True or False Questions

1. In Truman’s inaugural speech, he indicated underdevelopment was a threat to the entire world.

2. Absolute poverty is defined by the World Bank as an income below US$3.20 per day.

3. French demographer Alfred Sauvy used the term tiers monde (“Third World”) to refer countries outside the Eastern and Western power blocs during the Cold War.

4. The act of labeling is politically neutral.

5. Gross domestic product (GDP) per capita is useful for measuring inequality.

6. The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) emerged as a political bloc alternative to the Soviet and American superpowers.

7. “Developing countries” are perceived as politically stable regimes.

8. Libertarian philosophy argues that individual rights, especially to acquire and retain private property, are the central moral good.

9. Positionality describes the way states are economically positioned toward one another.

10. When GDP per capita reaches the level of a middle-income developing country, it is assumed industrialization has occurred.

11. Relative poverty is defined as a type of poverty that threatens daily survival.

12. The “Fourth World” originally referred to the internal colonization of Indigenous Peoples.

13. The World Bank has classified countries into low-, middle-, and high-income groups as a means of determining their loan eligibility.

14. The terms used to describe people, places, and processes within international development reflect the evolution of thinking about the relationship among nations.

15. “Growth with equity” is a strategy that focuses on maximizing GDP growth with no concern for how that growth is distributed.

16. Income inequality can be measured in two ways: by measuring the income of the different strata of the population and by using the Gini coefficient.

17. More growth in an economy always leads to a reduction in poverty rates.

18. The UN’s Human Development Report is philosophically and intellectually in line with the World Bank’s World Development Report.

19. Cosmopolitan arguments suggest that justice does not need to be universal.

20. Communitarianism assumes national borders have high moral importance.

21. Accepting the concept of positionality means that the development practitioner has little need to reflect on their relative power position vis-à-vis individuals in local societies.

22. The Human Development Index does not measure school enrolment rates.

23. Denis Goulet’s view that development should promote “life-sustenance” is an example of a multi-dimensional view of development.

24. Thomas Pogge argues that an economic order should be seen as unjust if it causes human rights violations that could be avoided under a different set of institutions.

25. Development ethics deals with, in part, how development practitioners and researchers should act.

26. In 2019, the Amazon region saw fires burning at a rate not seen in decades. This was mostly because foreign mining interests wanted access to gold mines.

27. The Paris Agreement on Climate Change was signed (but not ratified) in 2016.

28. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced developing and developed countries to shut down their economies, plunging the world into an economic and human well-being crisis.

29. The study of international development aims to explain both the diversity evident in the world in relation to human well-being and the common patterns that emerge when comparing people, social groups, nations, economic and political systems, and regions of the world.

30. Critical theorists have pointed out that labeling plays at least two important roles: labels make existing practices appear legitimate, and they also shape future policy-making.

31. Harry Truman’s 1949 speech is the first time a politician of that stature used the term “development.” By development, Truman meant a single, overarching scale on which to compare nations’ success or progress in relation to each other.

32. The conception of a “Third World” was first developed by Amartya Sen.

33. A country’s gross domestic product (GDP) is a measure of how much money each person in the country makes in a year.

34. Income inequality is an important concept to understand and measure because it has been shown to be an important constraint on development.

35. According to Amartya Sen, many of the “unfreedoms” that people experience are really their own fault.

Short Answer Questions

1. How does international development explore the diversity in human well-being?

2. What is absolute poverty? How does it differ from both moderate poverty and relative poverty?

3. What are the strengths and weaknesses of the World Bank’s approach to measuring development?

4. What are the basic principles of the capabilities approach?

5. What are the implications of the concept of “positionality” as it relates to development researchers and practitioners?

6. What is the “distribution of income” and what impacts does it have on development?

7. What is the significance of the term “growth with equity”?

8. What are the two uses of the term “Fourth World”?

9. What is the “Global South”?

10. What is the libertarian view as it relates to wealth and poverty?

11. Why is the concept of “labeling” important to the discipline of international development?

12. What do the terms “underdeveloped” and “Third World” imply?

13. How might it be possible that inequality actually has a negative impact on the rich?

14. What is the UN’s Human Development Index and what factors is it designed to measure?

15. What is Peter Singer’s “radical sacrifice approach” and what problem is associated with this view?

16. Why is the term “Third World” controversial?

17. Briefly discuss the three main types of justification for global redistribution in cosmopolitan philosophy: consequentialist, contractarian, and rights-based.

18. Why is “modesty” arguably a critical characteristic for contemporary development practitioners?

19. Briefly discuss arguments that have been made against global redistributive justice.

20. Define the term “Newly Industrialized Countries” (NICs) and list three examples of such countries.

21. List three methods for measuring “development.”

22. Define “Cosmopolitanism” in a development context.

Essay Questions

1. How is the very meaning of development contested?

2. What is the utility of the Human Development Index as it pertains to the field of international development?

3. How do cosmopolitanism and communitarian perspectives differ regarding international development?

4. Is foreign aid necessary for development?

5. Do our moral duties extend beyond our families, neighbours, and fellow citizens?