If the object of Hon Valerio Aurelius post was to prove that Italy is far richer country that Iran or Turkey; we accept this as a fact.
Italy is a fully developed economy specializing in the high value added products such as metals and metal products, clothing and footwear, motor vehicle including luxury vehicles, motorcycles and scooters it is therefore unfair to compare her with a developing country such ad Iran or a semi-developed country like Turkey.
However one must bear in mind that criterion by which wealth of a nation or an individual is determined has changed over the years. Anyone who has read the ‘History of Economic thought’ will know that during the 16th & 17th centuries Mercantilism was in vogue. Mercantilists believed that total wealth of the world was finite and one nation can only accumulate wealth at the expense of other nations. Thus one should export more and import less and the wealth of a country could best be judged by the amount of Gold /precious metal it possessed. Then came the Physiocrats led by Quesnay; who incidentally was a physician; these people believed that wealth of nations was derived solely from the value of agriculture produce.
Without delving into Adam Smith, Ricardo and Milton Keynes etc, let me jump to Simon Kuznets, son of Russian Jew émigré to the US, who came up with the idea of GDP & GNP in the aftermath of the US great depression in 1937. Now everyone uses this criterion to identify wealth of the nations.
In my humble opinion most important resource of any country is her “Human Resource” meaning quality of manpower. About 40 years ago a Pakistani economist Dr Mahbubul Haq came up with the idea of Human Development ( HDI) as a better measure of a country’s stage of development rather than rather than total GDP or GDP per capita
The
Human Development Index (
HDI) is a composite statistic (composite index) of life expectancy, education, and per capita income indicators, which are used to rank countries into four tiers of human development.
Human Development Index (HDI)
The composite index is measuring the average achievement of a country in three basic dimensions of human development:
- a long and healthy life
- knowledge
- a decent standard of living
Life Expectancy Index
The number of years you may live under normal conditions in a particular country.
Life expectancy at birth
Number of years a new-born infant could expect to live if prevailing patterns of age-specific mortality rates at the time of birth stay the same throughout the infant's life.
Education Index
Education is a major component of well-being; it is a key factor determining whether a country is a developed, developing, or underdeveloped nation.
1. Mean years of schooling
Average number of years of education received by people ages 25 and older, converted from education attainment levels using official durations of each level.
2. Expected years of schooling
Number of years of schooling that a child of school entrance age can expect to receive if prevailing patterns of age-specific enrolment rates persist throughout the child's life.
Income Index
It reflects the average income of a country’s citizens.
Gross national income (GNI) per capita
The total income of a country's economy generated by its production and its ownership of factors of production, less the incomes paid for the use of factors of production owned by the rest of the world, converted to international dollars using purchasing power parity (PPP) rates, divided by midyear population.
GNI per capita rank minus HDI rank
Difference in rankings by GNI per capita and by the HDI. A negative value means that the country is better ranked by its GNI than by its HDI.
For example per capita GDP of Qatar is $125K but Qatar is 37th and Italy with $30K GDP per capita is 26th.
Full list is here.
http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/human_development.htm
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