This lesson offers students an opportunity to use economic and social indicators to identify the connection between a country's access to resources and its economic development.

Geography, social studies

Standard 16: "The changes that occur in the meaning, use, distribution, and importance of resources"

Two to three hours

• Statistics on the international distribution of important natural resources (available in printed or online almanacs)
• Atlases with a variety of thematic maps

Students will

• learn to interpret basic statistical figures; and
• be able to discuss the relationship between a country's standard of living and its access to resources.

Have students bring in a collection of pictures from magazines and newspapers that represent a variety of standards of living around the world.

Read aloud to the students part one of Article 25 from the United Nations's Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing, and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

Using the pictures that students have brought in, create a horizontal continuum of photos from "richest" to "poorest." Ask students to explain the criteria used for their placement of each picture.

Noting the wording in Article 25, have students divide the photos into those that depict "adequate" conditions and those that depict "inadequate" conditions.

Explain the purpose of the World Bank and how it and other organizations use indicators to allocate funds for projects to improve economic and social conditions in a country. Ask students to list examples of indicators that the World Bank might consider important.

Part 1: Understanding how development is measured
Distribute statistics on economic conditions in several different countries to student groups. Help students determine the meaning of this data.

Ask students to use the statistics to classify each unidentified country as rich, poor, or somewhere between the two. Have students consider the following questions:

• Which indicators did you consider most significant?
• Which indicators did you not consider useful?
• What other information might have been helpful for classifying the standard of living of a country?

Provide formal categories for classifying a country's economic development. (The World Bank uses the terms "high-income," "middle-income," and "low-income.")

Part 2: Understanding how the use and distribution of resources affects a country's standard of living
Have students use reference materials to analyze a representative group of indicators from both high-income (industrialized) and low-income countries. Use the following format as an example:

• If a country's life expectancy is ___ years, would you expect it to be high-, middle-, or low-income?
• What resources available in that country promote or hinder long life?
• In what ways might that country be dependent on another country for resources related to life expectancy?
• What events might increase or decrease the availability of those resources?

Have students formulate a list of natural and human-made resources that seem to be associated with high levels of development, then have them locate the geographic origins of those resources. Introduce the idea of regional relationships, and the role of trade in the distribution of resources.

Give students a photograph of a city or village and ask them to determine the general standard of living represented by explaining the economic indicators evidenced in the image and by listing the available resources apparent in the image.

Have students view an economic development map of the world, and provide reference materials as needed. Assign students a region to analyze, and have them do the following:

• Describe the spatial organization of the data (i.e., identify geographic patterns). What factors might explain the patterns or lack of patterns?
• Describe the relationship between the economic status of the countries in the assigned region and the region's environment (e.g., climate or topography).
• Describe the relationship between the economic status of the countries and their population (e.g., total population or population density).
• What other world regions appear to have similar economic status? What factors might explain the similarities?

Sarah McCormick of Pepperdine University in Los Angeles, California, contributed classroom ideas for Standard 16.

CIA World Factbook
EconEd Link
National Geographic: Xpeditions Activity—The Quest for Gold
World Bank