Madison Fisher
Gross National Product
Figure 1
To first understand Gross National
Product (GNP), one must first know Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and how the two
are connected but not the same. GDP is the value of all final goods and
services produced within its borders. This is used as the traditional way of
measuring a country's economy (Rowntree). GNP or Gross National Income (GNI) as
it is now referred to as, is the GDP plus trade and other forms of income. This
way of measuring a country's economy is not the best because it does not
account for all the non-market activity, such as household work, and changes of
natural resources, such as trees in forests. The fault that many people make is
assuming that the GNI is consistent from year to year, but it is just a glance
at how an economy is doing at a certain time. Therefore one can conclude that
it is not an acceptable indicator for how the well-being or vitality of a
country will have.
All countries have different GNI, so to better help make
comparisons between countries, there is a Gross National Income per Capita.
This is where you divide the GNI by the country's population (Rowntree). The
last term that is used in the understanding of GNI is the Purchasing Power
Parity (PPP) that accounts for the strengths and weaknesses for currency. When
this adjustment is not accounted for, the GNI is just based on the market
exchange rate and it might be inflated or deflated primarily depending on the
strength or weakness of a country( Rowntree). There are shortcomings mentioned
in social well-being and some of the categories in that section are Human
Development Index (HDI), Poverty and Mortality, Adult Literacy and Gender
Inequality.
Egypt's GNI in 2013 was
890,333,119,901, so there has been an increase since 2010(GNI, PPP). In the
Human Development Index, Egypt is one of the few countries that has a medium
HDI ranking as shown in Figure 1.47 on page 38. This means that Egypt has
medium life expectancy, literacy, and educational attainment, gender equality
and income (Rowntree). The next category is Poverty and Mortality, which Egypt
shows a 22.41/ 1000 infant mortality rate (Africa). When dealing with reading
and writing, the literacy rate is at 73.9%, with females being at 65.8% and
males being at 81.7% (Africa). Gender Inequality, being one of the most
prevalent things in foreign countries is crazy in Egypt. The rate of
unemployment for women is at 54.1%, while it is only at a measly 14.7% for males
(Africa). This is due to the fact that many countries want to know the position
of women to men to prove that gender inequality is in fact a common thing that
occurs.
As shown, GNP is proven to have many shortcomings to measuring a
country at one point in time. Other measures are needed to make economic
development and the well-being of citizens.
Works
Cited
"Africa:Egypt." Central
Intelligence Agency. Central Intelligence Agency, 22 June 2014. Web. 26
Nov. 2014.
"GNI, PPP
(current International $)." Data. World Bank Group, n.d. Web.
28 Nov. 2014.
Rowntree,
Lester. "Chapter 1: Concepts of World Geography." Globalization
and Diversity: Geography of a Changing World. Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Pearson Prentice Hall, 2008. 37-40. Print.
Figure 1 and 2
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