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Exercise No. 6:  Analysis of the Relationship between GDP per capita and "Individual Life Conditions" and "Social Organizational Indicators"

Task One

  1. Read Chapter 10, "Domestic Social and Political Systems, in Exploring and Shaping International Futures.  This exercise first is going to examine "Individual life conditions" -- such as life expectancy (LIFEXP), illiteracy (Illiteracy%) caloric intake per capita (CalPCap), percent of children malnourished (MalnChP), infant mortality (INFMOR), and total fertility (TFR) -- and how they are related to GDP per capita (GDP2003PCPPP).  Read closely pp. 170 to 174.
  2. Open up the Intentional Futures Program.
  3. Open up "CountryData Analysis"
  4. Open up "Analyze Across Countries (Cross Sectional)
  5. Click on the " Independent 1" box and choose  GDP2003PCPPP (Gross Domestic Product per capita, Purchasing Power Parity, Year 2000 constant dollars), in the "Year" category  choose the year 2000, and tap the enter key.
  6. Go back and click the dependent variable box and put in one of the "Individual life condition" variables mentioned above, such as caloric intake per capita (CalPCap), choose the same year (2000) or the closest one to it.  Hit "Plot".
  7. You now should see a scattergram that plots each individual country's GDP per capita and caloric intake per capita on a graph.  The GDP per capita scale runs along the x axis of the graph  --  "10000"  means $10,000 per capita.   The caloric intake per capita scale is along the y axis  -- "3000" means 3,000 calories per capita.  Each "mark" on the graph is one country's situation -- say Cote d'Ivoire with $1,580 GDP per capita and 2,517 calories per capita.  There should be a hundred or so "marks" on the scattergram.  Hit "Display Options" and "no label" to clearly see just the dots.  Right click on the Scattergram to bring up the "Customization Dialog" so that you can give the scattergram a good title.  Right click of the Scattergram and bring up the "Export Dialog" to "Save" this scattergram into a Word file.  Choose one additional "individual life condition" variables from those listed on p. 175 and construct a similar scattergram for it.  Choose two additional "social organizational indicator" variable from those listed on p. 175 and construct two scattergrams for them.  Remember, GDP per capita should always be the independent variable and your other variable should be the dependent variable.  Save these scattergrams as well -- to the same Word file.  
       


  8. Your first task is to write an analysis of how each of the four variables you plotted seems to be related to GDP per capita.  Describe the general relationship that exits between the two variable.  Take a close look at the scattergram and see if you can determine how high  a country's GDP per capita has to be before it experiences a relatively high level of each "individual life condition" variable?  Look for the GDP per capita "sweet spot" after which the correlation between literacy or life expectancy or infant mortality and GDP per capita seems to go to zero.  Reading pp. 170 to 174 will help you greatly in doing these four analyses.
  9. You can write your analysis right in the same  Word document that contains the scattergrams.   You should also save the file for later use in your country study project.

Task Two

  1. Your second task -- which you can use directly in your country study project -- is to see if you can find a recent value for the GDP per capita (purchasing power parity) for your project country and a recent value for each of the four variables that you examined above.  A good first place to look is in the "Excel" version of each scattergram.  When the scattergram is on your screen simply click on the "Excel" button and answer the questions asked.  When Excel opens, look to see if data for the two variables in questions is available for your country.  If it is then you simply have to find the "mark" that corresponds to your country on the scattergram and highlight and label it.  You can print out the graph in your Word file to mark it if you can figure out to "label" it in the Word File itself.  If data is not available for your country in the Excel file then see if you can find it elsewhere.  A good place to look is the CIA World Factbook (http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html). 
  2. Having  marked your country's "spot" on each of the four scattergrams that you generated in Task One, write a paragraph describing where your country is on each scattergram, and whether or not it is an "outlier" or if it is follows the typical pattern found on that scattergram.