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GISdevelopment > Proceedings > Map Asia 2002 > Keynote Session
2. Materials and methods
The present paper is largely based on the database compiled by the World Bank in association with a large number of United Nations and other international organizations and published annually in their World Development Reports and World Development Indicators. It is known that such global databases have several shortcomings. In fact, several of these are discussed at length in the World Bank reports. On the other hand, if one wishes to make comparisons between countries across one or more regions, one needs a standardized global database and the database compiled by the World Bank seems to be the only one that meets the criteria of a reliable, standardized global database. Nevertheless, it is understood that the significance of many of the numbers may be somewhat limited and therefore they are taken mainly to indicate trends and are not necessarily assumed to accurately reflect the true situation on the ground in the all of the countries concerned. The economies of the world are classified according to their per capita gross national incomes (GNI/cap) in low-, middle- and high-income countries. Low-income economies are those with a GNI/cap of $ 755 or less in 2000. Middle-income economies are subdivided in lower-middle-income (GNI/cap between $ 755 and $ 2,995 in 2000) and upper-middle-income economies (GNI/cap between $ 2,995 and $ 9,266 in 2000). High-income economies are those with a GNI/cap of $ 9,266 or more in 2000. For analytical purposes, the World Bank generally uses GNI as measure for income and GDP for output, throughout its reports. Gross national income (GNI) is the sum of value added by all resident producers plus any product taxes (less subsidies) not included in the valuation of output plus net receipts of primary income from abroad. Gross domestic product (GDP) at purchaser prices is the sum of the gross value added by all resident producers in the economy plus any product taxes and minus any subsidies not included in the value of the products. It is calculated without making deductions for depreciation of fabricated assets or for depletion and degradation of natural resources. Value added is the net output of an industry after adding up all outputs and subtracting intermediate inputs. For further details of the methodologies and statistical methods followed by the World Bank, the reader is referred to the relevant World Bank reports (WB, 2000a,b). The World Bank follows a two-tier system for the regional classification of economies: at the highest hierarchical level the countries of the world are divided in high-income versus middle- and low-income economies, where the high-income countries are presented as one category, although in some cases a further distinction is made between countries that are members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and those that are not, or between countries participating in the European Monetary Union (EMU) and those that do not. At the next hierarchical level, the middle- and low-income countries are further classified according to regional groupings (see Table 1). The present paper will focus on two geographical regions: South Asia and East Asia & the Pacific. These two regions will be compared with the 3 high-income countries in the region: Australia, Japan and New Zealand. TABLE 1 : The world by regions, as used by the World Bank (WB, 2002b). All high-income countries are listed under 'high-income', either OECD or non-OECD. Medium- and low-income countries are listed by region. Only the countries marked with an asterisk (*) below are included in the tables in the World Bank report (WB, 2002b). Of these countries, Afghanistan, Hong Kong (China), Korea DR and Singapore (marked with **) are omitted from the following tables in the present paper, as data for these countries are often lacking.
It follows from Table 1 that none of the Pacific countries are included in the World Bank tables. Also, a few additional countries are omitted in the present paper, as they are less relevant or because data are largely lacking. However, these countries are included in the totals for the regions, given in boldface in the following tables, and therefore the totals by category do not simply represent the sum totals of the countries listed in the tables. The Republic of Korea is still classified as an upper-middle-income economy but its GNI/cap was $ 8910 in 2000, which is close to the limiting value of $ 9266, and thus in many respects its statistics resemble those of Japan more than those of the other countries in the region. The data in the tables included in this paper have been compiled from tables in World Bank (2000b), unless otherwise indicated. The choice of the parameters reflects the views of the author and the objectives of the present paper, but the original data have not been altered, other than rounding off some of the numbers or changing the units by one or more decimal places. Other Sections Application | Books | Business Info | Career | Companies | Country Page | Downloads | Education | Events | GIS@development Magazine | Glossary | History | Interviews | News | Publications | Subscribe | Technology | Tenders | Thesis | Tutorials | Updates |
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