The Human Development Index (HDI) has been instrumental in broadening the discussion of economic development beyond money-metric progress, in particular, by ranking a country against other countries in terms of the well being of their citizens. We propose self-organizing maps to explore similarities among countries using the components of the HDI…

The mass consumption of agrochemicals, including manufactured fertilizers and pesticides, by industrialized agricultural systems worldwide threatens human health and the health of ecosystems. The production of these agricultural inputs is a highly energy- and capital-intensive process, and their application contributes to a variety of direct and…

The New Media Consortium's Horizon Project is an ongoing research project that seeks to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have a large impact in education and other industries around the world over a five-year time period. The chief products of the project are the "Horizon Reports", an annual series of publications…

Global economic transformations have never been as dramatic as in the twentieth century. Most countries have experienced radical changes in the standards of income per capita, technology, fertility, mortality, income inequality and the extent of democracy in the course of the past century. It is the goal of many disciplines--economics, history,…

Designed to assist individuals who need to bring information to citizen groups or decision makers concerned with community economic development, this manual uses a question-answer format to cover topics that might occur to someone just starting to build an understanding of community economic analysis. Among topics covered are: strategies for…

This teaching guide accompanies the Life Expectancy at Birth poster kit, which presents statistics on life expectancy from 128 countries with populations of more than one million. The statistics relate to economic development and the changes it is bringing about in the world. Sometimes called indicators, the statistics are measures of social and…

Global figures that reveal the magnitude of the problem of illiteracy in the world disguise great disparities. For example, most of the illiteracy in the world is in developing countries. Therefore, it is preferable, and more appropriate in terms of numerical importance, to concentrate the analysis of illiteracy on developing countries. Such…

This teaching guide is premised on the ideas that economic development is the best means to a better life for the three-quarters of the world's people who live in developing countries, and that economic development will also contribute to a healthy and vigorous world economy. The goals of the guide are to increase student understanding and…