Developing Nation Indicators
The GDP in 2012 is $39.88 billion, which makes Ivory Coast one of the highest earners of the region, but still not at world standards. GDP per capita has risen from $1,600 in 2011 to $1,700 in 2012, this indicator shows that as a whole the country has gone above poverty level, but this number does not take into account the wealth disparity between the rich and the poor. The GINI value, representing inequality of incomes in the country is 41.5, meaning that there is high inequality, and the poverty is a reason that Cote d'Ivoire is still considered a developing country even though the economic data is increasing. The inequality adjusted HDI value, which gives a better sense of human development in the country is at .265; this value is very low and gives a better sense of the amount of wealth disparity there is compared to the the GINI indicator. Cote d'Ivoire are on an increasing economic growth trend, because the economic indicators keep increasing, but the economic development indicators are decreasing, in large part, because of the inequality that is created by the rich becoming richer and the poor still living in poverty. It is a huge gap when the HDI (Human Development Index) is .432 and the adjusted value for inequality is .167 under that value. To marginalize inequality the country needs to spend more of the money that is earned from growth and invest it back into its own economy in order to give the working class people opportunities to increase their standards of living, which right now the people do not have the opportunities to do so. The HDI value is very close to reaching .5 which will consider Cote d'Ivoire a medium developed country, but as long as the adjusted HDI value for inequality is not also higher, then Cote d'Ivoire will not truly be a developed country. Over the years the HDI value has risen, because of the increased GDP per capita, which is a good sign, but now the goal should be to increase the amount of support given to women and the lower class, because the country cannot advance until a higher amount of people are given incentives to start up businesses and do work. The reason that GDP per capita is not a good enough indicator or development is because that measures economic growth and so if the money from that growth is not put back into the economy the people will not benefit. The people's benefit should be the goal of every government, because economic growth must happen if economic development is to happen.
Education is a large component of the stability in a country's economy, if the people of the country are not able to sustain it then the country cannot be considered developed. A goal of the UN is to provide primary education to every country of the world by 2015, which does not seem likely at this point. The reason that this is a goal is , because primary education creates a basis for a working class at older ages. This working class can both diminish the inequality barrier and also lead to more business which will keep more money in the country instead of leaving abroad which will increase GDP and other economic growth figures. In Cote d'Ivoire one of two children between the ages of 6 and 11 do not attend schooling. The primary education goal that contributes to the inequality in the country is mostly due to the lack of infrastructure and school teachers that provide the education. Even the 50% of the children that do get schooling do not receive quality schooling. The parents have no incentive to put their children through school and to push their education, because as they see that the working class does not achieve any goals in the country the parents see no need for education and so children end up working from a small age. A part of this is also the fault of the government as the government does not put more money into primary education, and so the poor do not get any opportunities to make more money they remain with the same wages from young ages to older ages. Adult literacy rate is another important objective that the UN tries give, it is not enough that the country has primary education, if the education is not quality enough that children aged 15 and older still can not read and write. In 2010 only 56.17% of adults were considered literate through studies done by the government; we must also take into account the surveys done by the government can be inflated or deflated depending on what the government wants in terms of reaching their goals or wanted to receive more financial aid. In that literacy rate though only 46.61% were women and 65.17% were men. This creates another problem in the despairity of men and women. Empowering women is a goal the Cote d'Ivoire is needs to improve upon as the translation of importance on education will increase from women to their children if more opportunities are given.
Health measures such as life expectancy at birth and infant mortality rates are figures that economists must take into account if they are to really push a country towards development. The life expectancy of Cote d'Ivoire is now at 56 and has only improved by 2 years since 1990. This figure shows that even though there have been medical breakthroughs since 1990, it is still difficult for these medicines and vaccines to make it to Cote d'Ivoire and to be distributed to all people. It is still the higher class that has first opportunities to these medicines which creates inequality and the mean average life expectancy does not rise, because the people that need the medicines most are still dying young. What is most surprising is that in 2000 the per capita health finance in terms of PPP was $82 and it actually dropped by 2007 to $67 showing that the government has invested less money into health and it shows as the adult mortality rate has not changed much. The causes of death are also curable diseases in the modern world such as malaria and phenomena, the problem is that the government is not putting enough funding into health, and the distribution of the aid is not developed enough to created a decline in the number of deaths by these curable diseases. As a percentage of GDP the health financing is at 4.2% in 2007 and it was at 5.3% in 2000; the GDP has risen since 2000, but the money has not gone into the health care of the country. Poor healthcare has also come as an extension of the quality of education, and not enough initiative to send better professors to educate the doctors. Infant mortality rate has decreases, on the other hand, in 2009 only 83 moralities occur for every 1000 births, in 1990 about 105 moralities happened for every 1000 births. This is a good improvement and this could lead to a healthier population that lives more years in the future, if the infant can make it being healthy through the first year of their life. A healthier population can create better opportunities than just a large population that dies at an early age. One problem a developing country could have is that the mothers have too many children that are not healthy or the parents are not able to sustain them and so it just adds to the poverty rate. If less children were born, but they were healthier then the poverty rate could decrease and the HDI value could increase, because of it.
While HDI measures the achievements of countries towards development, the HPI (Human Poverty Index) helps to show how much of the development goes towards the the absolute poverty of the country. The HPI is another was to show inequality in the country by measuring the percentage of the population that is still in absolute poverty. 41.5% of Cote d'Ivoire's population is in absolute poverty, meaning that they are missing the necessities of life such as food, water, shelter, and health. How is it possible that Ivory Coast can be on of the most economically developed countries of Northwestern Africa and almost half of the population is in absolute poverty? This value places more emphasis showing that the government has not been putting money towards helping the poor and has only been helping the rich. Sometimes governments do this, because by helping businesses that are already working it will increase the GDP a lot more than to help somebody start a business or to get work, which might not increase the GDP in the short-term at all. That is a reason that Cote d'Ivoire's GDP has increased over the past decade, but the poverty rate has remained the same, the government is putting too much money back into the rich and not enough is invested in helping the majority of the population. To really get a sense of the distribution of economic distribution HDI needs to be compared to HPI and when comparing these values together Cote d'Ivoire stands in 82nd amound 102 African developing countries which means they are on the lower end of distribution of economic growth.
The gender-related development index (GDI) is an HDI value ajusted downwards for the inequality of women in the country. One of the millenium goals is to give empowerment to women. The GDI value of Cote d'Ivoire is .401; Out of 136 countries in the world where data is gathered from Ivory Coast is #131 for poor women empowerment. The GDI value is 95.2% of the HDI value which is very poor meaning that women have almost no say in the economy. 75% of women live below the poverty line, and so this explain the rest of the poverty in the country as most children are already born into poverty and do not have many opportunities to rise up from that. Just like any method for improvement the desire for women in Cote d'Ivoire is to have more financial opportunites to improve themselves instead of being tied down to follow the old "head of the household" rule where they were only to abide by their husbands. So far this is yet to happen as the laws written on paper are not being followed and the government has not given many opportunities to women, if any and so that is why the GDI to HDI ratio of Cote d'Ivoire is one of the worst in the world.
Project by World Bank to Help with Empowering Women in Cote d'Ivoire
The World Bank held a project where they met with 376 women from around the country of all educational level and from urban to rural communities. Empowerment of women is a large problem in the country that the government has done nothing about and so the World Bank is giving these women a chance to speak out and express their desires in an effort to make the laws that are already written a reality. The goal is to give these women more power by 2020, because that is the year when Cote d'Ivoire hopes to be an emerging developing country, but without focusing more of the economic power on women they cannot reach this status. The World Bank's director of operations stated that they need to "take into account the legitimate aspirations of women, whose daily lives are tied to the reality of the land, women (…) who not only have much to say, but above all, have much to teach us." (World Bank). Workshops were organized in order to teach women their place in public space, entrepreneurship, and how to combat violence ( 36% of women encounter physical or psychological violence). The problem is that many actions have already been made into law to give women more power, but because of the historical tradition not much has actually been changed about women's rights. In 2000 the constitution stated that everyone was equal in the eyes of the law, but since then nothing has really changed in the way women are treated; it is hard to desire economical change without changing the way that people treat women, all of today's developed countries have used empowerment of women to their advantage. The push is that women need someplace to start, as in micro-financial credit or some land. Women need to be able to generate their own income and in turn dictate their own future. What this study allows is to give women of Ivorian culture a place to start and from there be able to track their progress in order to in the future use programs like this on a wider scale if it works. One thing that the increased GDP has done to Cote d'Ivoire is that it has increased inequality, but now opportunities need to be given to women to fight back, that has to be the first step.
The production levels and type of production is very important to any economy, also money coming in and out of the country is important. 68% of the population is involved with agriculture and almost half of the country is involved with the growing of coffee beans, it is the largest export; one third of the world's cocoa comes from ivory coast. This cocoa production is great for the GDP, because that money comes back to the country. The problem with so much of the economy being over-specialized for cocoa production is, because if the world price falls for cocoa then the GDP of Ivory Coast could also experience large fluctuations.
Cote d'Ivoire, just like most developing nations experiences the dependency ratio problem, due to high population and very high percentage of the population of 15 year old children and over that are still not able to sustain themselves. In 2010 the child dependency ratio in Cote d'Ivoire was 75.91%, which was actually a 1.82% decrease since 2005. Cote d'Ivoire, since 1980 has been on the right track with child dependency burden, because it has kept decreasing at a fairly linear rate. The only bump in the road was been 2000 and 2005 where the dependency ration actually rose from 76.53% to 77.32%, but this was due to the civil war that was going on during that period, which was another setback of the country. When the civil war went on not as many jobs were available and children that were just old enough to work were not able to get jobs and so depended on the parents. Now that the country is a few years clear of war the government seems to be creating more jobs, but a dependency burden of 75.91% still leave Ivory Coast a developing country, because the work force can not provide for that high proportion of the population. There is not enough productivity per person push the country forward economically; this problem goes back to the inequality between the rich and the poor and also the men and women, because such a small portion of the population provides for the rest. The rest of the population is left dependent on about 25% which still does not produce enough, especially at the lower end of the spectrum, to provide for the increasing population. Solutions the government can provide is either finding a way to lengthen life expectancy so that more people can work and provide for the family to lower dependency ratios or find a way to lower the rise population rates which create more problems for dependency, because Ivory Coast must quicken their dependency ratio deescalation if they wish to strengthen their economy.