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economic development — English
The level of financial welfare of the population of a country or a specific group of people in a certain region or a place; the former is a national measure and the latter is a local measure. The economic development of either a country or a group of people, theoretically passes through a number of stages, namely a stage of primary economic activities (such as subsistence farming, fishing and forestry), followed by a stage of secondary economic activities (such as manufacturing and industrialised production of consumer goods), to tertiary activities (such as services and hospitality activities), and finally a quaternary stage of economic development, where the main economic activities are knowledge and information activities (see “development”, “developing countries” and “dual economy”). Various models have been put forward to describe the stages of economic development. The most well-known models are that of Rostow which applies to the wealthy, developed nations like the West European countries and the states of North America, the model of Barke and O’Hare which applies to the poorer, developing countries of Africa and Asia, and the core-periphery model of Friedman which describes the spatial patterns of economic development and explains the local geographical distribution of different levels of wealth in an area, such as a city or a country. Human welfare such as the availability of medical services, average levels of literacy and education, and the availability of social services are not taken into account when the level of economic development is described.
