MY view, as a special lecturer/instructor in Economic Development at the La Consolacion College Manila (under the deanship of Dr. Maximo Y. Muldong), is that the subject of Economic Development is not just a curriculum course for college students.
In a much wider perspective, economic development is certainly of critical importance to all low-income national economies struggling to transform into modern industrial economies—if not struggling to reduce their cycle of poverty by providing higher incomes, more employment, improved goods and services, et cetera. (Raising per capita incomes, by the way, is a stated objective of policy of the governments of all developing countries. [https://www.britannica.com/money/economic-development])
Undeniably, all countries strive for economic development.
Economic development implies “an improvement in economic welfare through higher real incomes and other welfare indices such as improved literacy, better infrastructure, reduced poverty and better health care.” It is all about improving living standards (higher levels of education and literacy, workers’ income, health, and lifespans). In 1997, the United Nations Development Programme indicated four chief factors in development, namely, empowerment, equity, productivity, and sustainability.
Notably, over the years, the precise definition of economic development continues to be contested.
20th century economists viewed development primarily in terms of economic growth. While sociologists emphasized broader processes of change and modernization. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_development) To Myint and Krueger, economic development should be accompanied by improvements in infrastructure, as well as social, political, and institutional factors to facilitate transformation of the economy.
Scholar Karl Seidman, for his part, referred to economic development as “a process of creating and utilizing physical, human, financial, and social assets to generate improved and broadly shared economic well-being and quality of life for a community or region.”
While economic development remains to be a continuing process/approach to improving the overall well-being of a nation and its citizens, the major factors affecting economic development should also be taken into consideration.
These factors include the following: (1) levels of infrastructure (transport and communication); (2) levels and standards of education (having a significant influence on labor productivity); (3) levels of inward investment; (4) political stability/law and order (any sign of instability increases the economic and personal risk of investing in developing countries). (https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/147654)
