Introduction

Over the course of the past few months, as part of the LASC course, we have researched and explored various factors which influence global development but more specifically Latin American development. While countries in Latin America share many traits, customs and often a common history the region is home to some well-run countries where the population have a good standard of living by world standards (e.g. Chile). However, on the other side of things, the region is home to some of the most poorest and corrupt countries in the world. e.g. Haiti & Honduras.

My personal interest is in the use of data for development and as part of this project I decided to research useful data from the region and see what factors may influence development in the area.

The word “development” is an all encompassing word which can refer to improvements in economic, political and social circumstances of a country or region. As part of this paper I have choose to look specifically at GDP and see how various factors compare to GDP in the countries of Latin America.

GDP of Latin American Countries

GDP can be a useful indicator of economic prosperity of a country and by can also be a good reference for other socio and economic traits such as health, life expectancy, poverty and so on.

The map to the right, illustrates that lower GDP’s are experienced in the smaller countries around the Carribean and the highest GDP’s are with countries in the South.

What is interesting here is that there seems to be a direct correlation between GDP and geographic location. There are any number of reason for this to happen and could perhaps be explored as part of a further study

What is also worth noting is the differences in GDP across the region ranging from $23K in Chile to just $1.7K in Haiti. This would suggest that countries in the region are at completely different stages of development.

Click on map to expand

People of Latin American Countries

The term Latin America primarily refers to the Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries in the Americas. The region has, and still is, home to large number of indigenous tribes which in some cases had advanced civilizations e.g. Aztec, Inca & Maya. During the colonisation of Latin America, much of the native population were killed.  In many parts of the region however, defendants still remain and there has been ongoing conflict between the Indigenous way of life and that of non-indigenous people.

The European explorers arrived in the region in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. There were various waves of immigrants from across the world in the preceding years including immigrants from Britain, Germany, Spain, Italy & Portugal as well as Japan and China.

A large number of African slaves were also brought into the region to work in mines, plantations and other areas serving the colonial overlords of the time.

All of this has led to diverse populations living within the same region, some may argue that a high % of indigenous people may hinder western style growth of a country. Looking at the map of indigenous people, there does not seem to be any direct correlation:

• Uruguay & Argentina have relatively low % indigenous with high GDP
• While Honduras and Nicaragua also have low % indigenous but have very low GDP

Crime, Democracy & Press Freedom Versus GDP

The following graphs illustrate GDP (top graph) and compare it to other factors

#1 Crime: Higher GDP seems to be related to lower crime rates

#2 Democracy: Higher GDP seems to be related to good levels of democracy (inverted graph)

#3 Press Freedom: High GDP seems to be related to greater press freedom. (although correlation is less obvious)

Urbanisation Versus GDP

The following graph illustrates the level of urbanisation in Latin America. As can be seen, the lowest level of urbanisation are in Bolivia, Guatemala and other countries in central America. This would indicate that there is a correlation between level of Urbanisation and GDP, whereas countries that are more urbanised have a higher GDP