Understanding global security - Peter Hough

ECONOMIC THREATS TO SECURITY
Table 4.1 The price of poverty – wealth and life expectancy
2001 ranking by GNP per capita, PPP a 2001 ranking by ‘healthy average life
(out of 208) expectancy’ b (out of 191)
Top (over $28,000)
1 Luxembourg 14 (70.6 years)
3 USA 29 (67.6 years)
5 Switzerland 2 (72.8 years)
7 Norway 13 (70.8 years)
8 Iceland 8 (71.2 years)
9 Denmark 17 (70.1 years)
Bottom (under $700)
203 = Burundi 182 (33.7 years)
203 = Congo 152 (43 years)
205 Dem. Rep. of Congo 177 (34.8 years)
206 Malawi 189 (29.8 years)
207 Tanzania 172 (37.8 years)
208 Sierra Leone 191 (26.5 years)
Notes
a
GNP is ‘Gross National Product’, the total earnings of all citizens of a country. This divided by
the population of the country gives the GNP per capita. This figure is factored by PPP, ‘purchasing
power parity’, the relative worth of that country’s money.
b
Healthy life expectancy is factored into ‘pure’ life expectancy, living years effectively lost through
ill health.
Sources: WHO (2002b: 200–201), World Bank (2003).
developed than their GDP would suggest. Equally, some countries by the HDI can
be understood as more developed than their income would suggest. The Congo, as
Table 4.1 indicates, is one of the poorest states in the world but is rated as a ‘medium
human development’ state according to HDI, thanks to relatively good health and
educational systems. Equally, the most developed countries by HDI are rich but not
the richest. Norway, Sweden and Canada held the top three slots on 2001 criteria.
Although there is more to money when it comes to achieving human security there
is no doubt that it helps. The poorest of them all, Sierra Leone, is still bottom of the
world according to the HDI rankings.
The most acute and immediate economic threat to human security comes in the form
of famine. (See Table 4.2.)
The information in Table 4.2 is highly approximated in a number of ways. First,
famines are functionally related to other threats to human security such as disease,
Famine
85