What is a developed country?

What is a developed country?

While world's leading economists have come up with great methods of defining 'Development', there is still no consensus on the correct method.
Am a novice in this field. But, lets see...

I feel amount of 'development' of a country depends upon the opportunities available to an average resident of that country. To understand this better, I have come up with a small model.

In this model (refer adjoining image), we try to put down the growth/status-quo/decline of all individuals living in a country.
Higher the growth of an individual, steeper the line.

If more people of the country grow over their lifetime, it indicates that they got better opportunities.
Of course, they must have hard too, but I assume all countries would have the similar mixture of hard working people. (I wonder if this is a valid assumption.)

The number of individuals and the rate of growth of these individuals is a fair indicator of the opportunities available to them.

If the line is not tilting or if it is declining, it indicates status-quo or decline i.e. a lesser developed country.


How is this different from the GDP measure used by most economists?

Well, GDP is a measure of the overall production of the country, which may have been financed by outsiders.
ethod is kind of independent of the initial position of the individuals.
By doing this, the bias of starting position and size of country is taken care.
In this measure, an effort is made to measure how much an individual is able to do during his/her lifetime under the available environment.


No, I am not claiming a better model.

This is only an effort to work out alternate methods to measure the development of a country.
Am sure there will be limitations of this model and it needs to be refined further to become truly usable.

Your comments are welcome.