I had a bit of a wander around Marrakech on my holiday there last week, and a day-trip to the Atlas Mountains too. Morocco is a medium development country according to the Human Development Index, and that seemed spot on from the few things that I saw. My reaction set me to wondering exactly what it was that a casual visitor encounters that indicates the economic development status of any particular place. Drawing on other travels, I settled on these non-standard but easily visible indicators – but maybe others can challenge them or think of better ones? The criterion (apart from validity) is that they should be easy for anybody to spot even if they know next to nothing abut a place.
1. Waste management – on an ascending scale from human to household to industrial waste (culminating in invisible greenhouse gas management, I suppose). The worst slums I’ve visited have no sewerage, the richest cities are clean and have good air quality. Along the way you get places where people dump rubbish on waste ground, and that includes, for example, parts of Sicily. (I think this indicator also explains why British householders get so cross when their local council tries to reduce garbage collections from weekly to every two weeks. Dealing with rubbish is a basic of effective government.)
2. Paved roads and floors. If they aren’t paved, there is dust or mud everywhere. Houses and children are impossible to keep clean. Transportation is slow – a donkey may be more efficient than a vehicle in the circumstances. Like indicator (1), this impinges on women’s time as well, as women do most cleaning/clearing up.
3. In the same vein, domestic efficiency. I can’t speak for Moroccan homes, having only seen one that was on display for gullible tourists as an example of a “traditional” house; but was interested to learn once from a student from Cameroon that he had never realised that one could have cupboards or shelves that gave things in the home their specific locations. He said his mother could never find anything because items were put down anywhere. I don’t know how universal this indicator is, so include it only tentatively, but nevertheless I think the value of women’s time is a crucial marker of a country’s development. That value is reflected in efficiency in the home and labour-saving devices and features.
4. No set prices. I know there is far, far less everyday haggling than one experiences as a tourist in the market. Even so, having labelled prices that are the same for every customer is essential for the convergence of prices and market efficiency. The alternative is price discrimination to the benefit of sellers rather than consumers, and an absence of the concise summary of information about preferences and resources that is key to the magic of markets. See John McMillan’s brilliant book [amazon_link id=”0393323714″ target=”_blank” ]Reinventing the Bazaar: A Natural History of Markets[/amazon_link] for more on this.
5. Finally, lack of scale. My generalisation here is that lower income countries are more likely to have very few private sector companies operating at sufficient scale. Scale is an important – and sometimes overlooked – aspect of productivity. Here is a picture of the wholesale market for hides in Marrakech, which I stumbled into. These traders have at most a couple of dozen hides each, and are selling them to manufacturers of leather goods in even smaller amounts.(It was an open outcry market.) One also peers into workshops where youngsters are making small numbers of shoes and bags by hand. Handicrafts? Or just inefficiently small scale?
In the market for hides in Marrakech (Picture by Rory Cellan-Jones)
I couldn’t find an email address to direct this message to but I just wanted to thank you for the consistently excellent posting, especially the highlighting of the fantastic books (some of which) that I’ve now had the pleasure of reading. Thanks!
You are very kind to say so, thank you!
I couldn’t agree more. Even if you don’t get much comments I am sure there are plenty of people that finds much joy from your blog.
I’ve just returned from S Africa, and whilst your comments are interesting, the positioning of 1st world and 3rd so close together is a difficult proposition to come to terms with. We were honoured to be able to visit a local ‘settlement’ and spend a little time in real houses, which to my western eyes was humbling and there were certainly no cupboards but the roads are excellent, the shops didn’t seem to want to haggle etc etc. Any thoughts?
That’s very interesting. S Africa and Morocco are close on the HDI ranking, the former a few places higher in the list. I wonder if there were other things that struck you as you travelled? The idea I’m groping towards is that the value of people’s time in the labour market will be reflected in investment in infrastructure and social arrangements that increase convenience and the efficiency of everyday life. Maybe inequality or large disparities between groups as in S Africa make a difference? And cultural factors too?
I’ve been giving this some thought and in terms of your comments on the infrastructure and the value of time we were initially surprised that, even along the excellent roads in our part of S Africa, the approach to roadworks were signalled by people standing and waving a red flag when traffic came along. It works incredibly well actually but I guess that is placing the marginal value of labour at just a little above zero, and I certainly wouldn’t be volunteering on our roads.
I would also like to raise a point on the nature of the skilled workforce that we mention so often and wonder whether we have a western view of what constitutes a skill. The reason why I ask is because we were volunteering at an elephant park during our stay, and the elephant handlers are highly skilled and need to go through an aprenticeship scheme, which takes several years, and additionally as they work with tourists can speak at least two languages plus their own. That sounds like skilled to me but doesn’t seem to fit with the notion of green spaces etc. Many of the handlers live on site or in the local township. Do yo think we define skills too narrowly?
The elephant handlers sound skilled to me too. Do you know if they were much better paid than other less obviously skilled staff? There is too much focus on academic qualifications as the only measure of skill, however. There are lots of jobs where non-cognitive skills, either innate or based on long experience, are necessary. Anyway, I don’t think there’s a simple answer as history and contingencies will also explain a lot of differences between countries.
Very interesting list and very well observed. Personally I’ve traveled fairly extensively in Southern Africa and China and have noticed some of the same things. Another one I would add to the list is greenery, the richest countries and the richest parts of poor countries always seem to have the most trees planted and urban parks. Not really sure why that is the case, would be interested to hear your thoughts.
With regards to South Africa, I think part of the differences mentioned above is due to the large inequality so while roads are excellent in parts, in other poorer parts the roads aren’t good. The difference is often stark, I could always tell in China and South Africa that I was coming to a rich area as the roads started to improve!
I’ve been mulling this over and wonder if green spaces are one of the amenities a city needs to attract a high skill workforce. If so, it would need to be positively correlated with housing, school quality, restaurants, cinemas etc…. What do you think?
That’s true, I hadn’t previously thought of it like that. I was thinking more along the lines of a growing appreciation of the environment and the need to protect it which would be correlated with economic growth. In China for instance, the middle class is starting to worry more about environment, greenery, water quality etc. I wonder if there is any research on attracting skilled workers in the way that you suggest?
There are correlations between amenities and skill level of labour force. Your ‘luxury good’ hypothesis is probably better!
If the tallest building of the capital city belongs to the private sector, it is a rich country
If the tallest building of the capital city belongs to the government, it is a middle income.
If the tallest building of the capital city is occupied by the UNO, the country is in deep, deep trouble.
That’s an excellent one – although you would perhaps need a bit of additional knowledge to ascribe ownership.