HL extension: Human development and diversity practice questions.

Two middle-income countries record almost identical GNI per capita at purchasing power parity, but in one of them maternal mortality is far higher and far fewer parliamentary seats are held by women. Which UNDP measure is designed to capture that difference?

• The Gender Inequality Index
• The Human Development Index
• The inequality-adjusted Human Development Index
• The Multidimensional Poverty Index of household deprivation

Answer: The Gender Inequality Index

The Gender Inequality Index is built from reproductive health, empowerment and labour market participation, so it registers exactly these gendered gaps; the HDI averages national health, education and income and the inequality-adjusted HDI discounts for overall inequality, so neither separates women from men.

Grameen Bank in Bangladesh lends small sums without collateral, mainly to groups of rural women who guarantee each other's repayments. Which feature of the scheme most directly supports the economic empowerment of those women?

• The bank is owned and directed by the national government of Bangladesh rather than by its borrowers
• Borrowers control an income and a savings account in their own name
• Loans may only be spent on the purchase of farmland
• Interest payments are waived for the first five years

Answer: Borrowers control an income and a savings account in their own name

Empowerment means control over resources and decisions, so the decisive change is that a woman holds the loan, the enterprise and the savings herself; group liability explains the repayment rate but not the shift in household power.

In 2023 low- and middle-income countries received more than US$600 billion in remittances, considerably more than total official development assistance in the same year; India and Mexico were the two largest recipient countries. Which characteristic of remittances most helps development at household level?

• They are negotiated between donor and recipient governments and tied to policy conditions
• They are invested mainly in large-scale national infrastructure projects
• They reach households directly and are spent on food, schooling and health
• They must be repaid with interest to the sending country

Answer: They reach households directly and are spent on food, schooling and health

Remittances bypass state budgets and donor conditions, so the money is spent where the recipient family decides. Studies consistently associate remittance income with higher household spending on food, schooling and health, though remittances do not fund the public infrastructure that aid can.

McDonald's serves no beef in India and built its Indian menu around items such as the vegetarian McAloo Tikki burger. Which process does this best illustrate?

• Cultural imperialism, in which one culture is imposed on and displaces another
• Glocalisation, the adaptation of a global product to local tastes
• Cultural homogenisation of consumer landscapes
• Relocation diffusion carried by migrant communities

Answer: Glocalisation, the adaptation of a global product to local tastes

The corporation is global but the product is reworked for a local religious and dietary context, which is glocalisation rather than the one-way imposition implied by cultural imperialism.

The worldwide popularity of South Korean popular music and television drama since the 2000s is most often cited as evidence against which claim?

• Cultural traits can be spread by media as well as by the movement of people
• Global interactions have increased the speed at which cultural traits diffuse between places
• Cultural landscapes change when global brands arrive in a city centre
• Cultural influence flows only from high-income Western countries outwards

Answer: Cultural influence flows only from high-income Western countries outwards

The Korean wave is a counter-flow: cultural power now travels in several directions at once, so models that assume a single Western hearth no longer describe global cultural diffusion.

In New Zealand, pre-school language nests have taught te reo Maori to young children since 1982, and the language was made an official language in 1987. Which term best describes this development?

• Cultural revival led by an indigenous minority
• Cultural imperialism imposed by a colonial administration
• Cultural homogenisation driven by global media companies
• Cultural hybridity produced by the mixing of two languages

Answer: Cultural revival led by an indigenous minority

Speaker numbers were falling and the community itself organised transmission to the next generation with later legal backing, which is revival; hybridity would require a new blended form rather than the recovery of an existing language.