Please post your answer by 11:59PM EDT Thursday June 12th and respond to at least one of your classmates’ postings by 11:59PM EDT Saturday June 14th.

The CIA World Factbook is published annually and contains economic, political, and social data for nearly every country in the world. To pull up rankings of each country on each data item go to https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/. Click on “guide to country comparisons” midway down the center of the page. Under “category”, click on “economy”.

Click on “GDP- per capita” and look up GDP per person for five “poor” countries (low GDP per capita) and five “rich” countries (high GDP per capita) of your choosing. Write these countries and the corresponding numbers down, then go back one step and choose “GDP- real growth rate”. Write down the growth rates of the countries which you selected for the previous part of the exercise. Based on your examination of the data, can we assume that all poor countries grow fast? Should we assume that countries with lower levels of GDP per person will automatically be able to catch up with living standards in rich countries? Please include fact-based information from this exercise in your assessment, but also feel free to add your own personal views on the subject.

note: the CIA’s weblinks may not be working. Use these:

per capita GDP: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2004rank.html

GDP real growth rate: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2003rank.html