Untitled Flashcards Set

• Stages of Growth

  • By Walter W. Rostow.

  • Countries can be placed in one of five categories in terms of their stages of growth.

  • Countries become wealthy by following the path of high-income nations like the United States and Europe.

  • The stage of growth coincides with the infant mortality rate.

  • Traditional Society (Stage 1) is characterized by:

    • In a subsistence economy, output is not traded or recorded.

    • Existence of bartering.

    • Poor society.

    • High infant mortality.

    • Based on high levels of agriculture and labor-intensive agriculture.

    • Example

      • Lesotho

  • Pre-conditions Society (Stage 2) is characterized by:

    • Development of mining industries.

    • Increase capital use of agriculture.

    • External funding is needed.

    • Growing savings and investment.

    • Decreasing infant mortality rate.

    • Surplus of agricultural goods.

    • Exploiting natural resources (Gold, Silver, Platinum, Oil, Coal, Gas, Timber, and Wood) for internal use.

    • Examples: 

      • Rwanda

      • Democratic Republic of the Congo

  • Take off (Stage 3) is characterized by:

    • Increasing industrialization.

    • Extractive economic activities take root.

    • The number employed in agriculture declined as other industries took over.

    • Taxes get implemented

    • Infrastructure (Environment, sewage, education, defenses, and healthcare) begins to receive funding.

    • Infant mortality rate decreases yet again.

    • Examples:

      • Venezuela

      • Trinidad

      • Pakistan

  • Drive to Maturity (Stage 4) is characterized by:

    • Growth becomes self-sustaining.

      • Happens quarter after quarter.

    • The industry is more diverse.

    • Manufacturing (Vehicles, electronics, and clothing) plays a key role in economic growth.

    • Levels of technology used in the economy and society increase.

    • Examples:

      • China.

      • Brazil.

      • Russia.

      • India.

      • South Africa.

  • High Mass Consumption (Stage 5) is characterized by:

    • High output levels.

    • Mass consumption of consumer durables.

    • High level of employees in the service sector (Education, technology, finance, retail, entertainment, real estate, and healthcare). 

    • High levels of easily accessible healthcare.

    • The large degree of technology and medicine is largely inaccessible elsewhere.

    • Lowest level of infant mortality.

    • Example:

      • United States of America.

      • Canada.

      • Japan.

      • South Korea.

      • New Zealand.

      • United Kingdom.

      • France.

      • Germany.

      • Australia.

  • As poverty decreases, infant mortality decreases as well.

Feb 3, 2025 Week 2 Part 1

Week 2 Part 1

• Industrial water pollution reaches its peak in 1980, when it begins to decline

  • .All related to the predominant form of economic activity within a nation at a given period. EXAM QUESTION!!!

    • Ex; Manufacturing, agriculture, or services

• Environmental Kuznets Curve is the graph of Environmental Degradation vs Per-capita Income

  • This does not apply to all forms of pollution

  • It does not count for exporting of pollution from rich to poor nations

• What do you get from a pampered cow? 

  • Spoiled Milk

Feb 10, 2025 Week 3 Part 1

Week 3 Part 1

•  Beyond the Environmental Kuznets Curve: Multinational Corporations and Their Impacts

• Multinational Corporations

  • A company with its headquarters in a high-income nation and operations in one or more low-income nations

    • Ex: Mcdonalds, ExxonMobil, Apple, and Nike

• Race to the Bottom

  • A phenomenon that is said to occur when competition among poor nations to attract multinational corporations leads to progressively lower environmental regulations in addition to wages and taxes

  • Takes two forms

    • Export Processing Zones: part of the nation where multinational corporations locate a factory. In this location, the company is often exempt from obeying a country's laws and regulations

    • (Almost) Complete Relocation: A process whereby an entire industry relocates to a low or middle-income nation

      • Potential exam question: Identify forms of the race to the bottom

Feb 12, 2025 Week 3 Part 2

Week 3 Part 2 

•  International Monetary Fund

  • A multilateral organization that provides loans to low and middle-income nations to prevent them from going bankrupt

    • A multilateral organization is one that is financed by three or more nations.

  • A little over 50% of the money is contributed by the USA

    • The USA can determine the rules for loans

    • Structural adjustment loan

      • Has conditions or reforms attached to said loans

        • Conditions and reforms adversely affect health and facilitate the race to the bottom in these nations.

  • .United Childrens Fund

    • Adjustment with a human face

      • Women are uniquely and disproportionately impacted by structural adjustments.

      • Structural adjustment exacerbates gender inequality in low and middle-income nations.

    • Indirect effects on women’s health

      • Less female educational attainment

      • More informal labor force participation

      • More food insecurity

  • IMF requires nations to cut government spending

    • Cuts spending on health, education, and environmental protection

    • Cut public spending on health

      • Closing family planning and pre-natal care facilities

    • User Fees

      • Leads to a two-tiered system of health services

Feb 17, 2025 Week 4 Part 1

Week 4 Part 1

•  World Bank Group

  • Provides structural adjustment loans

    • Short-term loans (2-3 years) provided to low or medium-income nations

    • A nation must adopt certain macro-economic policy conditions in return for the money

    • “String attached” if you want the cash

  • Took publication of adjustment with a human face of effect on women 

    • Infrastructure

      • Construction of hospitals during the 1980s

      • Increasing primary care access for poor

        • Clinics in rural areas (early 1990s)

  • Reforming the World Bank Group

    • Became increasingly aware many lower and middle-income nations were not able to repay their investment loans

    • Cost recovery

      • User fees attached to investment loans for health (the mid-1990s)

    • Privatizations of Health Services

      • Not just government delivering services (mid-1990s)

    • Investment in HIV/AIDS treatment (2000s onward)

      • Rapid testing, medication, and contraception

    • Gender Informed Projects

    • Sector-Wide Approach

      • Partnerships with other organizations

      • Didn’t only focus on the  health sector

  • Organized hypocrisy

    • Finance Ministry Agenda = Structural Adjustment

    • Civil Society Agenda = Investment Lending for Health

    • One is for making money for Congress, while one concern is making money for the improving life for the countries

Feb 19, 2025 Week 4 Part 2

Week 4 Part 2

•  The problem:

  • 40% of people in sub-Saharan Africa live on less than $2 a day

  • Children in sub-Saharan Africa are 5 times more likely to die before reaching the age of five than in any other region of the world

  • The debt burden 

• When a low or middle-income nation owes more to creditors (ex. IMF, WB, high-income nations) than it earns via exports and taxes or its government revenues 

  • Debt burden and health relationship

  • Low or middle-income nations spend more money on paying off its debt than on health

  • Nations are spending more money on servicing debt (repaying debt) and there’s nothing left to spend on health

  • World Bank and IMF recognized this problem so they created the Highly Indebted Poor Countries Initiative to help solve this problem

    • Low-income spending too much on repaying debt than healthcare

    • Program that provides debt forgiveness to low and middle-income nations that qualify 

      • How do nations qualify -> 2 steps

        • Reach a decision point

        • Have a debt burden that exceeds 280% or more of a country's government revenue

        • Have an “established track record of reform and sound policies through IMF and WB supported programs.”

        • Consistently implementing macroeconomic policy reforms, suggested by the WB and IMF as a part of structural adjustment loan (aka they’re doing what they’ve been told to do) 

• How do they do this?

  • Develop a poverty reduction strategy program

  • Plan to promote growth and reduce poverty by putting specific reforms into place -> structural adjustment lending (similar)

  • A plan devised in consultation with the IMF and WB that seeks “to promote growth and reduce poverty through implementation of specific economic and political reforms

  • Reach a completion point

  • “Establish a further track record of good performance under programs supported by loans from the IMF and WB.”

  • Adopt and implement its PRSP (Poverty Reduction Support Program) for at least one year

• Results

  • Partial debt relief when passing the decision point and full debt relief when passing the completion point

  • The debt relief frees up finances that can now be spent on health and education

  • Qualifying for debt relief under the program requires the implementation of structural adjustment

  • PRSPs include reforms similar to structural adjustment

• Mixed Impact

  • Low and middle-income nations that reach the decision point will see an improvement in infant mortality

  • More money is being spent on health

  • There is no effect once a low or middle-income nation reaches the decision point or in subsequent years

  • Structural adjustment and PRSP start reducing improvements, the initial improvements that occur slow down

  • It helps in the short term but the implementation of structural adjustment and PRSP (which are highly similar) lead to the same pattern of results

Feb 24, 2025 Week 5 Part 1

Week 5 Part 1

•  What is the World Health Organization?

  • Multilateral institution established in 1948

  • Based in Geneva, Switzerland

  • Part of the United Nations System

• What does it do? (First 30 Years)

  • Eradication of infectious diseases

  • Increases vaccination prevalence

  • Smallpox

  • Vertical or top-down approach to health

    • World Health Organization comes in and sets up clinics and hands out vaccines.

      • NO input from the government or the population

  • If they couldn’t eradicate a disease through vaccinations?

    • Manage and control the spread of infectious diseases

    • Provides bed nets (Malaria Prevention)

    • Spray Pesticides

    • Drugs including antibiotics and antiparasitics

• World Health Organization from 1978 Onward

  • World Health Organization member states sign the Alma Alta Declaration

    • Health as a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being is a human right

    • The highest possible level of health is a global social goal involving the social, economic, and health sectors that is crucial to social and economic development and world peace

    • Inequality between developed and developing countries is unacceptable

    • People have the right to participate individually and collectively in healthcare planning

    • Socially acceptable methods of technology must be universally accessible to individuals at a cost their communities and countries can afford

    • Primary healthcare is characteristic of a specific country and addresses the main health problems of communities; non-health interventions in education, agriculture, and nutrition require community and individual self-reliance in planning and operation and rely on local health workers

    • all governments should form national policies and plans to launch and sustain primary healthcare as part of a comprehensive national health system

    • all countries should cooperate in the spirit of partnership

    • independence, peace, and disarmament “could and should release additional resources” for peaceful aims, of which primary healthcare should receive a significant share.

  • How does it accomplish these goals?

    • Shifts to focus on primary health care to improve access to quality essential services

    • Improve access to essential medicines and health products

    • Train the health workforce to deliver primary care

    • Support people’s participation in the formation of national health policies

    • Collects data

      • Uses data to set international standards for treatment options

      • Disseminates infomation

    • Promotes research

  • World Health Organization emphasizes

    • Preventing and controlling the spread if 

      • HIV/AIDS

      • Malaria

      • Tuberculosis

      • Neglected Tropical Diseases

    • Preventing non-communicable diseases

    • Prevent smoking

    • Prevent obesity

    • Promote safety

    • Worked disasters

      • California wildfires

      • Conflict Zones

  • Potential Problems

    • Financing

      • 18% of the WHO’s budget comes from member states to support the organization

      • The remaining 80% of WHO’s budget is composed of voluntary contributions from governments, international organizations, and private agencies.

      • Consequences

        • Makes budget planning and prioritization difficult for the World Health Organizations

        • Not sure how much the organization will receive from year to year.

        • Voluntary contributions are often “earmarked” by a donor.

          • US earmarks with abstinence-only sex education

        • It weakens WHO’s decision-making power and shifts it to wealthy governments or other donors.

        • Funding may not reach the highest priority programs.

        • In 2014, the United States provided $173 million in earmarked funding to the World Health Organization

        • In the same year, it allocated less than $1 million for the World Health Organization’s “outbreak and crisis response” fund.

Feb 26, 2025 Week 5 Part 2

Week 5 Part 2

Answer the last question is A !!!! 30 questions

• United Nations Population Fund

  • Multilateral institution established in 1948

  • Based in Geneva, Switzerland

  • Part of the United Nations System

    • In 1985, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) carried out the first efforts to measure maternal mortality across the world

  • Deaths due to childbirth per 1000 live births

  • 500,000 maternal deaths annually

  • Not equally distributed across the planet

  • This is more pronounced in low-middle-income nations 

  • Lack of healthcare due to structural adjustment, race to the bottom

  • Maternal mortality disproportionately impacts low- and middle-income nations

    • 99% of deaths occur in low- and middle-income nations

  • Determined that maternal morbidity is likely to occur in low-middle-income nations

  • Mother doesn’t die during childbirth but suffers health-related consequences during her life because of the pregnancy

    • Such as disability, pain across life course, infertility

  • All equal = maternal morbidity or any health condition attributed to and/or aggravated by pregnancy and childbirth that adversely impacts the women's health being

  • 1987, UNFPA organizes the  first international conference on maternal mortality

• International Safe Motherhood Conference

  • UNFPA brings together doctors, researchers, government officials, officials from other multilateral organizations, and experts to try to solve the problem of maternal mortality 

    • UNFPA = Coordinating Agency

  • Form interagency group on safe motherhood

  • Coordinates safe motherhood and other reproductive health activities of United Nations agencies, the World Bank, the World Health Organization, and national governments 

  • Came up with A Standard Pack of Maternal and Newborn services that should be provided to every mother

    • Cost $2.50

  • Provides contraception/ family planning, doesn't include access to abortion

  • Provide prenatal care 

    • Leading to fewer women to begin with to be educated

    • Need to eliminate user fees

  • Limitation

  • Funding disruptions

  • The United States has withheld funding to the organization under the Bush and Trump administrations

  • Bush and trump administration argue that UNFPA is funding coerced abortions

  • The UNFPA policy on abortion, as approved by its executive board, is twofold

  • Prevent recourse to abortion by promoting universal access to voluntary family planning

  • Deal with the consequences of unsafe abortion to save women’s lives.

Mar 3, 2025#11

Lecture #11

•  Race to bottom

  • When lower and middle class nations race for participation in multinational corporations

    • Laxes environmental and worker rights regulations

  • Includes the following four:

    • Export processing zone

      • Where the factories are at in the poor nation

    • Relocation of industry to a dirty nation

      • Exports full industry to a poor nation

• Rostow’s Five Stages of Growth (1 Question from each of the stages)

  • Traditional society

    • Agriculture

    • North Korea, Somalia, Yemen, and Haiti

  • Pre-conditions for Takeoff

    • Agriculture is still the predominant form

    • Extractive industries (Natural resources extracted)

  • Takeoff

    • Manufacturing grows

    • Taxes implemented

  • Drive to maturity

    • Manufacturing becomes the predominant form

    • Growth becomes self sustaining

  • High Mass consumption

    • Mass consumption of consumer goods

    • High levels of output

• What do you call a magic dog?

  • LabraCadabraDor

• Why do environmental kuznet curve believers believe it exists

  • Predominant form of economic activity

• Why do critics say the curve exists

  • Doesn’t account for outsourcing of pollution (Race to the bottom)

• United Nations Development Program (UNDP)’s main concern is HIV/AIDS

• Macro Economic Reforms - D. All of the above

  • User fees

  • Privatizations 

  • Cut in government spending