DIPL 3201: Sustainable Development - Module 2 Exam Study Guide

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering all core terms, concepts, measurements, and policy frameworks from Module 2 of DIPL 3201: Sustainable Development.

Social inclusion/exclusion

The process and condition of enabling or denying individuals and groups full participation in political, economic, and social life across multiple dimensions.

Gender dividend

The economic growth and development when women are fully integrated into education, the labor force, and decision-making.

Global Gender Distortions Index (GGDI)

A measure used to assess inequalities, distortions, and disparities faced by women relative to men across socioeconomic indicators.

SDG 5

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal dedicated to achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls.

Total Fertility Rate (TFR)

The average number of children a woman is expected to give birth to over her lifetime based on current age-specific fertility rates.

Replacement rate

The level of fertility at which a population exactly replaces itself from one generation to the next, conventionally around $2.1$ births per woman.

Old-age security motive

The economic rationale where parents have children as a savings instrument or social insurance to provide care and financial support in their old age.

Quantity–quality tradeoff

The economic model proposing that parents face a tradeoff between the number of children they have and the amount of human capital investment (such as education and health) made per child.

First-order and second-order beliefs

First-order beliefs are an individual's personal opinions or values; second-order beliefs are that individual's perceptions of what other members of the community believe.

Injunctive and descriptive norms

Injunctive norms describe perceptions of what behaviors are socially approved or disapproved (what people ought to do); descriptive norms describe perceptions of what behaviors are actually practiced by others (what people do).

Pluralistic ignorance

A social phenomenon in which a majority of group members privately reject a norm or hold a belief, but incorrectly assume that most other group members support it.

Household bargaining

The negotiation process among family members with differing preferences (such as between husbands and wives) regarding household resource allocation and fertility decisions.

Idiosyncratic shock

A risk or adverse event that impacts a single individual or household independently of others (such as family illness or personal asset loss).

Covariate shock

An adverse event or aggregate risk that simultaneously impacts an entire community, region, or country (such as a drought, flood, or economic depression).

Ex-ante vs. ex-post costs of risk

Ex-ante costs refer to precautionary choices made before a shock occurs (e.g., planting lower-yielding, safer crops); ex-post costs refer to the direct damages, distress sales, or consumption drops suffered after a shock strikes.

Index insurance

An insurance product that pays out based on a predetermined, measurable external trigger (such as regional rainfall thresholds) rather than on verified individual losses.

Basis risk

The risk in index insurance that an individual's actual loss does not correlate with the external index, causing a farmer who suffered damages to receive no payout, or vice versa.

Proxy

A targeting mechanism used in social assistance programs to determine eligibility by scoring easily observable household assets and demographic characteristics as proxies for income.

Group liability

A microfinance mechanism where a group of borrowers is collectively responsible for each member's repayment, using peer pressure and social screening to mitigate moral hazard and default.

Asset-based lending

A lending model where loans are secured against specific physical assets or productive capital provided to borrowers rather than rely purely on unsecured credit or cash transfers.

SDG 1.4

The Sustainable Development Goal target ensuring that all men and women, particularly the poor and vulnerable, have equal rights to economic resources, financial services including microfinance, and ownership over land.

Malthus’s two postulata

The two foundational assumptions formulated by Thomas Malthus in $1798$: that food is necessary for man, and that people will reproduce

The Malthusian trap

The historical condition where technological gains and productivity increases merely lead to population growth rather than sustained improvements in per capita living standards.

High-yielding varieties (HYVs)

Genetically improved crop cultivars designed during the Green Revolution to substantially boost yields when combined with specific agricultural inputs.

Semi-dwarf varieties

Strains of wheat and rice bred with shorter, sturdier stalks so they can bear heavier grain heads without falling over (lodging) under heavy fertilizer use.

The four complementary inputs

The combined agricultural inputs essential to achieving high yields with Green Revolution crops: improved seeds (HYVs), chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and controlled irrigation.

Pastoralism

A branch of agriculture and livelihood system centered on the raising, grazing, and herding of livestock, identified as exceptionally vulnerable to climate change in SDG $2.3$.

Borlaug and the Mexican wheat program, 1943

The agricultural research initiative spearheaded by Norman Borlaug starting in $1943$ that developed disease-resistant, semi-dwarf wheat varieties, launching the Green Revolution.

IRRI and IR8, 1966

The International Rice Research Institute's breakthrough semi-dwarf rice variety released in $1966$, which dramatically increased rice yields across Asia.

Identifying the binding constraint

The analytical process of diagnosing which specific barrier, market failure, or bottleneck most critically restricts economic development or adoption when multiple obstacles exist.

External validity

The extent to which the causal findings and estimated effects of a study or randomized controlled trial in a specific context can be generalized to other populations, settings, or times.

Statistical vs. substantive significance

The distinction between whether an estimated effect is reliably distinguishable from zero by statistical tests versus whether its real-world magnitude is large and meaningful enough to alter policy decisions.

Null results

Experimental or empirical findings indicating no statistically significant difference or policy impact between the treatment group and the control group.