Grade 12 Geography unit 5: Challenges of economic development

Relative poverty occurs when households receive 50 percent less than average household incomes, meaning they have some money but cannot afford the standard of living enjoyed by the rest of society.

Scores on the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) are measured on a scale from zero (most corrupt) to 100 (least corrupt).

Malaria is a leading cause of child mortality in Africa and costs the continent around $12 billion in lost productivity each year.

Globalized competition often leads to brain drain, where highly educated professionals migrate to developed countries for better wages, leading to a decrease in skilled labor in developing countries.

Persistent poverty is specifically defined as the condition when households receive 50 or 60 percent less income than average incomes every 2 out of 3 years.

Systematic theft at a grand scale by high public officials is called kleptocracy. Crony capitalism refers to systematic patronage with large stakes.

A Gini coefficient of 0 reflects perfect equality (where all income values are the same), whereas a Gini coefficient of 1 reflects maximal inequality.

The structural approach points to systemic reasons for poverty, such as institutional discrimination, low wages, and failure to invest in social insurance, education, and health care.

The convergence hypothesis argues that latecomers grow faster because they can adopt existing pioneer technologies, benefit from low production costs (like low labor wages), and shift farm labor to higher productivity industrial sectors.

A trade imbalance (or trade deficit / negative trade balance) occurs when the total cost of a country's imports exceeds the total earnings from its exports.