Industry
The process of using machines and large-scale processes to convert raw materials into manufactured goods. Has stimulated social, political, demographic, and economic changes in societies at all scales.
Raw Materials
The basic substances such as minerals and crops needed to manufacture finished goods.
Market
A place where products are sold.
Cottage Industries
Small home-based businesses that made goods. These industries depended on intensive human labor since people used simple spinning wheels, looms, and other tools.
Industrial Revolution
Starting in the 18th Century: A series of technological advances. It resulted in more complex machinery driven by water or steam power that could make products faster and at lower cots than could cottage industries.
Industrial Belt
Stretched across the midlatitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. It included the northeastern and midwestern U.S., much of Europe, part of Russia, and Japan.
Deindustrialize
A process of decreasing reliance on manufacturing jobs. Happened to the industrial belt near the end of the 1900s.
Rust Belts
Regions that have large numbers of closed factories.
Primary Sector
Extracting natural resources from the Earth.
Secondary Sector
Making products from natural resources.
Tertiary Sector
Providing information and services to people.
Quaternary Sector
Managing and processing information.
Quinary Sector
Creating Information and making high-level decisions.
Multiplier Effect
The potential of a job to produce additional jobs.
Least Cost Theory
Developed by German economist Alfred Weber. Explains the key decisions made by businesses about where to locate factories. Weber proposed that factory owners would locate their factories where they could minimize their total costs by balancing 3 factors: Minimizing transportation costs, minimizing labor costs, and maximizing agglomeration economies.
Agglomeration Economies
The spatial grouping of several businesses to share costs, such as an access road to a public highway or development of a workforce with special skills.
Locational Triangle
Weber's model can be shown using this. The three points of the triangle are the market for a good and two resources needed to make the good.
Bulk-reducing Industries
Raw materials lose bulk (Weight and size.) during processing. Ex: Copper is embedded in heavy rock when first mined, but it loses bulk as it is processed. Also known as weight-losing, raw material-oriented, or raw-material-dependent industry.
Bulk-gaining Industries
Raw materials gain bulk during processing. Ex: Soft drinks become bulkier as processing occurs. The heaviest component of a soft drink is water. Since water is widely available (ubiquitous), companies try to add it as close to the market as possible, rather than pay to ship the weight of the water. These factories usually locate close to the market. Also known as weight-gaining, market-oriented, or market-dependent industries.
Labor-oriented Industry (Labor-dependent Industry)
Highly dependent on a workforce and will want to be near a source of those workers.
Break of Bulk
The procedure of transferring cargo from 1 mode of transportation to another.
Containerization
The system in which goods are loaded into a standardized shipping unit.
Intermodal
They can be carried on truck, train, ship, or plane.
Footloose
Businesses that can pack up and leave for a new location quickly and easily.
Front Offices
Spaces designed to impress clients. Ex: To signal its prominence and wealth, a corporation might want to locate its main office for its top executives on the expensive upper floors of a skyscraper in a large city.
Back Offices
Less expensive office spaces. The company might decide to locate the rest of its employees there.
Gross National Product (GNP)
Measures the dollar amount of all goods and services produced by a country's citizens in one year. Involve money generated by citizens and businesses of a country, regardless of where the citizens are, or live, when money is earned.
Gross National Income (GNI)
Measures the dollar amount of all goods and services produced by a country's citizens in one year. Involve money generated by citizens and businesses of a country, regardless of where the citizens are, or live, when money is earned.
Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
The dollar amount of all final goods and services produced within a country in one year.
Remittances
Sending regular money to support relatives while you're working abroad.
Per Capita
For each person.
Purchasing Power Parity (PPP)
The rates of currency conversion that try to equalize the purchasing power of different currencies, by eliminating the differences in price levels between countries.
Formal Sector
Municipal (city or town or its governing body) agencies or private firms that are responsible for waste collection, transport, and disposal.
Informal Sector
The part of any economy that is neither taxed nor monitored by any form of government.
Gini Coefficient
Measures the inequality among values of a frequency distribution, such as the levels of income.
Life Expectancy
The number of years a person can expect to live.
Literacy Rate
The percentage of the population of a given age group that can read and write.
Gender Gap
The difference between women and men as reflected in social, political, intellectual, cultural, or economic attainments or attitudes.
Gender Inequality Index (GII)
Index for measurement of gender disparity that was introduced in the 2010 Human Development Report 20th anniversary edition by the United Nations Development Programme.
Human Development Index (HDI)
A statistic composite index of life expectancy, education (mean years of schooling completed and expected years of schooling upon entering the education system), and per capita income indicators, which is used to rank countries into four tiers of human development.
Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs)
An organization that generally is formed independent from government.
Microcredit (Microfinance)
A non-profit approach to development and depends on external support, while microfinance programmes seek to return enough profit to be self-financing.