At the turn of the century, before I became AfricaNurse, I was a student of International Development at McGill University in the Nation of Quebec. International Development was a catch-all major for diplomacy and development geeks (most of whom were unknowingly destined for the Peace Corps), with one too many economics classes for the likes of me. I did, however, learn some useful things that helped me to ultimately become a better AfricaNurse.
One of the things We the International Development Majors learned about first (after the school had provided us with unlimited quantities of a certain product of one of their better-known financial contributors, Molson), was the Human Development Index (HDI). The HDI, if I remember correctly, is a system for ranking the relative development of countries according to the following parameters: education, as measured by literacy rate (2/3 weighting) and educational attainment of its citizens (1/3 weighting); population health, as measured by average life expectancy; and standard of living, as measured by the logarithm of the gross domestic product per capita.
Almost 5 years after singing "we don't need no education" to my economics professors, I'm returning to my developmental roots. I would like to propose, for the consideration of the International Development community, a new-and-improved development index for Africa: The Peugot Developmental Index (PDI).
I explain. A Peugot is a make of French car, and the Peugot 7 passenger model is a popular choice for a shared taxi (a seat for one passenger in the front, 3 in the middle, and 3 in the way back... kind of like your soccer mom's van, except with only one window roller-downer that has to be passed around the car). Aicha took a little side trip to check out Senegal this week, and one of the first things she said when she returned was that she had seen a taxi, a Peugot 7 passenger taxi, with... wait for it... SEVEN passengers inside. This made me think, automatically, wow... that Senegal is really ahead of its time. Here in Cote d'Ivoire, a Peugot "7 passenger" taxi would normally have 2 customers crammed in the front passenger seat, 3 in the back with at least 2 children on laps, and at least 3 guys in the back. How to quantify my astonishment? Let children = 0.5 persons, and every additional passenger in the front over 1 person=1.2 persons (because of the relative danger of this practice), for an average passenger burden of 9.2. Already you see that Senegal is more developed than Cote d'Ivoire.
Compare this with Aicha's previous experience in Guinea, where a "7 passenger" Peugot would have no less than 3 adults sharing the front seat, 4 in the back plus 2 children on laps, and 4 in the way back: 1+2(1.2)+4+2(0.5)+4=12.4. Guinea is in the earlier stages of development.
Now we transform the raw variable into a unit-free index from 0 (least developed) to 1 (most developed), using the formula:
x-index= 1 - [ ( x - min (x) ) / (max (x) - min (x) ) ]
where min (x) and max (x) are the lowest and highest values the variable x can attain, respectively. I choose 1 as the lowest possible value (for what is a taxi without at least one passenger?), and 13.5 as the highest possible value (3 in front with 3 kids on laps, 3 in the back with kids on laps, and 3 in the way back with kids on laps. Remember - a kid is 0.5 people).
Thus Senegal receives a 0.48, where Cote d'Ivoire receives a 0.344. Guinea receives a 0.088. Not so hot. Interestingly, the relative rankings correspond with the actual rankings given by that old dinosaur, the Human Development Index (which is sooo last year). Ok, I'm supposed to be writing my final report, so I should probably stop procrastinating.
p.s. I don't care if this math doesn't check out. Don't email me about it.
so much love for this post.
ReplyDeleteComment from highly esteemed ecologist, via email:
ReplyDeleteI won’t quibble about your math, but would point out that the index has one flaw: seems to me that on the high end, x approaching 1, you would be rewarding people for wastage with such a simple index. In America, for instance, an SUVDI, since there aren’t many P’s here, would yield a very high index because most seats would be empty. In an ideal, sustainable Africa (forget America for a moment, may be too late for them), people would be car-pooling and taxi-sharing, like Canadians or New Zealanders. We need to figure out how to penalize very high scores with a term that kicks in near one and keeps everybody from being rewarded for wastage. But that would be a kind of Affirmative Action. So maybe instead, we should just add a term that rewards people for driving with a full car, a kind of Energy Tax in reverse. Or perhaps we could institute a cap and trade…