Where does prosperity begin?
Like humus in soils, prosperity is a continuum that can at best be fixed for a single moment in time and in a particular state.
Prosperity is the result of myriad circumstances that create a subjective, enduring, positive perception of a group or individual. Commonly, one also speaks of happiness and abundance. It is based on material and immaterial circumstances.
So where does prosperity begin and where does it stand in lack? An extremely tricky business. Everyone talks about it, but everyone defines and feels it for themselves.
Homo economicus would say: prosperity begins where all a person’s basic needs are satisfied.
Global indices and their limits
In contrast to past times, material prosperity dominates today throughout the world. The English refer to this as wealth, while the German language simply lacks the word to make this difference. It is measured in gross domestic product (GDP) or the Human Development Index (HDI). In doing so, the HDI seeks to combine the key indicators
- Gross national product per capita
- Life expectancy and
- Duration of education
into a three dimensional index. The extension of the HDI to the IHDI adjusts these three dimensions for inequalities and looks at human development status in terms of a state of well-being.
According to this and the perception of the United Nations, the African continent is far behind all other continents, deep red. Also southern parts of Asia score poorly, although it is not necessarily said that people there would feel in want. Still, many existing circumstances of those people can be derived from the dimensions listed above and the indices provide quite an accurate picture of how people feel about their own state of prosperity.
Indicators make the impact of your project visible in a before-and-after comparison. For this purpose, suitable parameters are individually developed or used for your project.
Precisely fitting parameters show impact and success
The measurement of prosperity is always a matter of individual discretion on site deriving from the perception of the respective target group. From this perception, indicators can be developed to show an increase in well-being (prosperity) in the course of the project.
For development projects at the regional level, individually developed indicators enable the determination of prosperity in this region.
The necessity to use public infrastructure as housing, the possibility to use a village community plow, the ability to operate it, the ability to sell overproduced goods directly to a mobile crop processing station, knowledge about how to use locally available organic fertilizers, access to a better variety of grain, ownership of livestock, land, or a cell phone with internet access, the number of children with access to education, the right to vote, the freedom to gather – All of these can be important indicators to measure prosperity.
My offer includes support of R&D projects providing services of general project management, quality management according to ISO 9001:2015, marketing and sales support, workshops, trainings as well as product validation according to scientific standards.