Global Benchmarks

How do you measure the progress countries are making in economic development? Should measurements focus on per capita income or output? Or should assessments also consider education, health, a clean environment, or a participatory political system? These questions have vexed national leaders, international donor agencies, and development practitioners for decades. This book was conceived to address the lack of definitive, comprehensive measures of development among policymakers, economists, and other social scientists. It presents a unique and innovative measurement system for country progress in six aspects of development: economic performance, competitiveness, education, health, environment, and democracy and freedom. The authors scored over 100 countries individually and plotted their development performance along six vectors, allowing them to be benchmarked against one another. They illustrate at a glance whether the country's development is balanced and allows the country's progress to be monitored over time. This book presents the conceptual framework supporting a Development Web model, the scoring systems, as well as 100 individual Country Development Webs accompanied by discussions of their scores and country conditions. Copublished with SRI