Response to Jahan and Rosling

Concepts, Themes, Ideas

Increasing human development has always been a goal too far away to reach, but now we have no more excuses stopping us from achieving that. Big data and geospatial analysis has pioneered a way for scientists to analyze the quality of life around the world, from a country through county level analysis, and effectively determine where the quality of life around the world needs to be worked on. While Jahan and Rosling both go over the same them of the quality of life and the Human Development Index (HDI), Jahan mainly focuses on the HDX and how it is constructed whereas Rosling mainly hones in on the application of HDI in a research setting.

Jahan and Rosling both have a central theme of needing to improve the quality of life. Within his podcast, Jahan explains that the quality of life is about what humans have the capacity to do and if they have the opportunities to utitlize those capabilities. For instance, he states that artist, volunteer, and care workers are needed in order to improve the quality of life because they allow humans to think beyond their current state. Rosling adds to this theme by focusing on the development of the quality of life within east asia. By focusing on the progress of the quality of life, through discussing life expentancy, he also adds that focusing on the quality of life is important.

The two scientists contrast during the rest of their talks. Jahan mainly speaks to the components of the HDI. For instance, he breaks the HDI into two measures: breadth and focus. The breadth measure is looking at the quality of life from a macro lens. The focus measure is looking at specific characterstics of quality of life: basic happiness, knowledge, etc.. Jahan, on the other hand, takes his lecture to the application of the HDI. For instance, he uses the different measures to analyze the quality of life in east asia. He specifically points out how it has grown within the passed decade and how the measures helped him asses this decision. Though Rosling and Jahan speak about human development and the HDI, both scientists go into drastically different measures with the topic.

Question: What are some of the targetted issues that Jahan examples as requiring focus throughout the world? Elaborate further on Jahan’s definition of human development. What are the different measures incorporated into the Human Development Index that serve to capture the breadth and focus of each countries’ average achievement?

Answer:

When Jahan discusses focus throughout the world, he mainly talks about living a long, health life, having knowledge, and having some sort of basic standard of life, and the discussion surrounding focus plays a significant role into his definition into human development. First, he says that human development is about human capabilities advancing, but in order to utilize that development, opportunities need to be created in order to maximize those capabilities. For instance, Jahan speaks about increasing the amount of creative jobs (i.e. artisitic, volunteer, or car work), because those opportunities will help humans become more interconnected. Jahan breaks the Human Development Index into breadth and focus, suggesting the breadth is like a house (macro-level) and the focus is like the door (micro-level). From the breadth measure, we can get to know the world from multiple perspectives to see the quality of life. From a focus measure, we can see how humans live a long, happy life with basic knowledge.

Question: What were some of the examples Rosling presented where health appeared to be a precursor to wealth? What was Rosling’s warning regarding the dangers of using averages when describing development?

Answer:

Towards the beginning of his talk, Rosling demenostrates that lower income countries in east Asia generally had shorter life spans, indicating low levels of health. By the end of his talk, he brings attention to how many east Asian countries (i.e. China, Vietnam, and South Korea) have revitalized with a growing economy, correlating this to their longer life spans. So Rosling insinuates that having healthier lives allowed people to be more engaged citizens, thus revitilizing the economy. Rosling’s warning regarding the dangers of using averages relates to how quickly data change and how vastly different situations in countries are. If these things are prominent, then averages are misleading.