The Use of GM Crops in Developing Countries
Introduction (continue) Box 1.1: What do we mean by ‘developing countries’?
A useful way of distinguishing between countries at different levels of development is to compare their relative income. This is often expressed as the gross national product (GNP) per person. By developing countries we mean those countries with a GNP in 2001 of less than US$9,205 per capita.* However, a country’s economic development, the well-being of its population, and its capacity to benefit from decisions and policies made in the developed world depend on much more than average GNP. Other influential factors include:
- the purchasing-power of a country’s currency;
- the composition and efficacy of its spending, especially on basic health and education;
- its income distribution; and
- its climatic and other risks.†
(*) World Bank (2003) World Development Report 2003 (Washington, DC: Oxford University Press and World Bank), pp. 233–5.
† A succession of annual United Nations Human Development (UNHD) reports has endeavoured to allow for such matters. In practice, indicators of mean GNP which are adjusted to take into account the variable purchasing power of one US$ in different countries (purchasing-power parity, PPP) provide a rough guide to levels and trends of welfare, and are closely correlated with human development indicators such as life expectancy and access to education, see World Bank (2003) World Development Report 2003 (Washington, DC: Oxford University Press and World Bank), pp. 2347.