185

How do you compare development between countries? Do you compare average gross income? Education level? Life expectancy? Comparing each one of these factors individually doesn’t give you the whole picture of what is going on in a country.  For example, say you have country A and country B.  Country A has an average life expectancy of 50 while country B has an average life expectancy of 65.  Based on that information, you might say that country B is more developed than country A.  But what if the mean education level of country A is 7.3 years of school while country B’s mean education level is 5.1 years of school.  By this measure, country A seems more developed than country B.  So, how do you compare the development of these countries?  How do you compare development of neighboring countries, or countries around the world?

Luckily, some smart statisticians have come up with an index that allows us to compare countries based on multiple factors.  They decided that in order to get a general idea of the development of a country we should look at the three big issues: health, income, and education.  A lot of things go into making a country healthy, educated, and economically stable.  For the population of a country to be educated it needs enough teachers to teach, buildings to hold school in, roads for kids to get to school, books and supplies so kids can learn, and the kids needs to have enough free time from chores or work to actually go to school, among other things.  For a country to be healthy it needs doctors, medical supplies, clinics, hospitals, public health workers, health education, and access to services, and probably a lot more.  The index that combines all these factors is called the Human Development Index and combines life expectancy, means years of schooling, mean expected years of schooling, and average income.  If a country has good scores on all these factors they are probably doing pretty well development-wise while a country that scores low on any of these factors probably isn’t quite as developed. 

As of 2013 there were 187 countries included in the index.  Mozambique is number 185.  For perspective, the United States is number 3. Peru is 77.

Why does Mozambique score so low on the HDI?  The biggest reason is education.  As of 2013, the mean years of schooling is only 1.2 years.  During the civil war many people were not able to go to school so the country basically lost a generation, both in lives and in education.  While Mozambique has made tremendous progress since the civil war ended, the education system still needs a lot of improvement. According to a report by USAID, the male adult literacy rate is only 60 percent.  Education for women is even worse: only 28% of adult women can read. 

I will be teaching high school students, but I hope to start an early reading program to help children, especially girls, learn to read and foster a love of reading.  For the complete USAID article click here: http://www.usaid.gov/mozambique/education#.UoIE1Nf5cnk.facebook