Globalization of Human Well Being Globalization Has

Globalization of Human Well Being Globalization has been held responsible for increasing the gap between rich and poor countries and thus giving rise to social and economic inequalities between higher and lower income groups. However the best indicator for measurement of economic inequalities has always been per capita income. Goklany contends that it is not the per capita income, which is important instead there are some other indicators, which can better explain the impact of globalization on poor countries.

These indicators include, access to food, elimination of hunger, access to safe drinking water, mortality rate etc. Goklany thus writes: "While wealth or per capita income...is probably the best indicator of material well-being," but there are more important indicators of human well being too including, "such as freedom from hunger, health, mortality rates, child labor, educational levels, access to safe water and sanitation and life expectancy." These indicators are important since they indicate improvement or otherwise in living standard and human well being.

Human Development Index is a very important indicator developed by United Nations Development Program to see how a country is performing socially. In other words this indicator reveals the extent to which economic progress or lack of it has affected human well being in the country. "The HDI is based on the average of three measures: life expectancy at birth, educational attainment, and the logarithm of per capita income." this indicator has the most appropriate criterion for assessing the level of social well being of a country.

HDI ranking 2003 indicates that there exist serious development problems. Western countries occupy top positions while Asian and South American countries are ranked low. United States, Argentina and Malaysia are ranked 7th, 34th and 58th respectively. While everyone believes that globalization is bad and is negatively affecting poor countries, very few fail to understand that globalization can have a positive impact and economic inequalities can sometimes benefit the poorer nations.

This is because with more potential for growth in poorer countries, due to globalization, rich nations are attracted to these countries and invest more. As the result of which more amenities become available to the poor at cheaper rates.

Goklany writes: "The rich are not better off because they have taken something away from the poor; rather, the poor are better off because they have benefited from the technologies developed by the rich, and their situation would have been further improved had they been better prepared to capture the benefits of globalization." The Primacy of Institutions Economic institutions are systems that regulate, run, and influence and control different economic processes in a country. This is a delicate concept, which needs to be studied carefully.

When we discuss economic institutions, we are not talking about some specific bodies such as banks or financial institutions; instead we are talking about systems that control economic processes. These systems may include some specific financial or business bodies too but institution itself is composed of various economic forces that aim to regulate and control some specific economic process. Geography and integration play an important role in defining the economic boundaries between rich and poor countries.

Geography determines which areas of the world are more suitable for agriculture and hence these areas remain underdeveloped since they largely depend on agriculture as their main source of GDP. On the other hand, nations with lower dependence of agriculture and unfavorable geographic location automatically turn to more sophisticated means of producing goods and services and thus become wealthier, more advanced.