With Its Extreme Economic Inequality,GDP Is Not A Good Measure Of Botswana's Socio-Economic Progress
According to the World Bank, Botswana remains one of the most economically unequal countries in the world, only behind her neighbors South Africa and Namibia. Botswana's GINI coefficient, which represents a country's economic inequality, stands at 0.53, with a GINI coefficient 0 representing perfect economic equality and 1 representing complete inequality. On the other hand, Botswana's GDP per capita, which represents a country's economic output relative to its population, stands at $8,258, making Botswana an upper-middle-income economy. The GDP metric was devised by the American economist Simon Kuznets in the 1930s and was originally used in the 1940s during World War II by countries involved in the war to determine what their economies were capable of producing so the said countries could decide how much financial effort they could put in the war. However, over the years, the metric has been used to identify economic progress, going against what the originators inte…
