Unit 7
Industrial and Economic Development Patterns and Processes
Notes
Industrialization
- The Industrial Revolution began in Britain in the late 1700s and spread to Europe, North America, then East Asia.
- Economic sectors: primary (extracting resources), secondary (manufacturing), tertiary (services), quaternary (information and research), and quinary (top-level decision-making).
- As countries develop, more workers shift from primary to secondary and tertiary jobs.
Measuring development
- GDP and GNI (per capita), Human Development Index (income, education and life expectancy), the Gender Inequality Index, the Gini coefficient, and the share of workers in each sector.
- Women's access to education and jobs is a strong sign of development.
Theories of development
- Rostow's stages of growth: traditional society → preconditions for takeoff → takeoff → drive to maturity → high mass consumption. Critics say it assumes every country follows the West's path.
- Wallerstein's world-system theory: core (wealthy, high-tech), semi-periphery (developing industries, like Brazil and China), and periphery (raw materials, cheap labor). The core benefits from the periphery's dependence.
- Dependency theory: colonialism created lasting economic dependence.
- Weber's least cost theory: factories locate to minimize transportation, labor and agglomeration costs. Bulk-gaining industries (like soft drinks) locate near markets; bulk-reducing industries (like copper smelting) locate near raw materials.
Globalization and trade
- Outsourcing and offshoring moved manufacturing to lower-wage countries. Export processing zones and special economic zones (China) and maquiladoras (Mexico) attract foreign factories.
- Deindustrialization in older industrial regions (the U.S. Rust Belt). Post-Fordist flexible production; just-in-time delivery.
- Neoliberal policies, free trade agreements (USMCA, the EU), the WTO, and microloans for small businesses.
- Sustainable development goals (the UN SDGs) and ecotourism. Growth hubs and growth poles like Silicon Valley rely on agglomeration.
Practice
The tertiary sector provides services.
It's a broader measure of well-being.
They depend on core countries.
Adding water makes the product heavier to ship.
They use cheaper labor and lower tariffs.
Factories closed or moved abroad.
It ignores colonial history and global inequality.
Firms benefit from being near each other.
Free response
Write your answer first, then open the scoring guide.
Free-response question
Answer (a), (b) and (c).
(a) Describe ONE difference between core and periphery countries in world-system theory.
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Core countries have high-wage, high-tech industries and control capital, while periphery countries rely on exporting raw materials and low-wage labor.
Check off the points you earned:
(b) Explain ONE reason companies locate factories in special economic zones.
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Lower taxes, fewer regulations and cheaper labor reduce production costs.
Check off the points you earned:
(c) Explain ONE limitation of using GDP per capita to measure development.
Show the answer and scoring guide
It's an average, so it hides inequality, and it doesn't measure health, education or the informal economy.
Check off the points you earned: