Development indicators: what are we trying to measure?

Abstract

If we mean by development the establishment of conditions that make possible the achievement of human personality, its measurement must consider three economic criteria as follows: a) the diminution of poverty; b) the diminution of unemployment; c) the diminution of social and economic inequalities. But how would it be possible to get the growth of the Gross National Product without having, by that reason, an improvement in those domains mentioned above, one must conclude that the development has to be measured in a more direct way. In this article one analyses and dicusses the conceptual and practical problems of some development indicators, as well as the implications resulting for planning,
both at the national level and at the international one.