4.2 Indicators of Economic Development

1. Economic: GDP/GNI per capita (with PPP adjustment for price differences); growth rate; sectoral composition (the agriculture→industry→services shift); capital formation.2. Social/human: literacy and schooling; life expectancy; infant and maternal mortality; access to water, sanitation, electricity; the Human Development Index (health + education + income, since 1990); the Multidimensional Poverty Index; gender-parity indices.3. Distributional: the Gini coefficient and poverty headcounts (4.5.1–4.5.2).4. Sustainability: environmental indicators; "Beyond GDP" measures (Bhutan's Gross National Happiness the famous alternative). Limitations of GDP (always write two): ignores non- market work (household labour — half the economy and invisible); ignores distribution (a rising mean with rising inequality); ignores the environment (deforestation counts as output); and ignores the informal economy — large in Nepal. Exam line:GDP is a good measure of aneconomy's traffic, a poor measure of its travellers' welfare.