Jalaj Sood Leap Geography 2a 16 February 2012

Cuba Development Cuba is a very versatile country when it comes to being developed, developing, or underdeveloped. Its characteristics are very distributed between all categories. Determining which type of country Cuba is very difficult indeed. Cuba is a high end developing nation that is not developed only because it is a communist country. In the population aspect, Cuba is mostly developed. The birthrate of Cuba is 9.96 out of 1000 people. This birthrate is relatively low and falls into the developed category as it is under 15. A low birthrate allows a country to keep its population and come out of the developing stage. The death rate of Cuba is 7.52 which also falls under the developed category as it is under 15. Since the death rate is very close to the birthrate it allows for the population to stay steady but still have growth. Cubas infant mortality rate is at 4.82 deaths per 1000 and it also falls under the developed category as it is under 10. A low infant mortality rate shows that living conditions in Cuba arent too terrible. The life expectancy is 77.87 years which easily falls under developed as it is over 70. High life expectancy also shows the fact that people live longer in Cuba. The fertility rate is 1.45 children per women and since this is between 0 and2 it also falls under the developed category. This shows that women do not have many kids which keeps the population in check. Finally the literacy rate of Cuba is 99.8% which is extremely high and is clearly also in the developed category. A high literacy rate clearly indicates that the people in the country are highly educated and are very smart. In the communication and transportation aspect, Cuba is also very developed. In transportation, Cuba has 136 airports with paved roads, 8, 958 km of railway, and 60, 858 km of roads. All of these fall

under the developed category and clearly show that Cuba is able to maintain high-class quality transportation services. In communication, Cuba has 1.164 million telephones, 3,024 internet hosts, and 1.106 million internet users. All of these also fall under the developed category and show that Cubans are able to afford technology and communicate with the world and each other.

The government is one aspect that Cuba does not fall under the developed category for. In order to be developed you must have a democracy, a republic, or some sort of constitutional monarchy as these are the only things that guarantee full human rights. Cuba is a Communist State and while its government is pretty stable it faces many human rights issues. People have no basic rights in Cuba as Cuban law limits freedom of expression, association, assembly, movement, and the press. Even though
technically the people were allowed to elect their president, there was only one candidate running; Rahul Castro. He ended up receiving 100% of the votes as he had no opposition. Having a communist government extremely inhibits Cubas ability to be a developed country as the people are completely oppressed. Lastly in the economy aspect Cuba is a very developing country. Its GDP growth rate is 1.4% which actually falls under the underdeveloped category, showing that the Cuban economy is not expanding very fast. Cubas GDP is about $57.49 billion. This falls under the developing category mainly because it is between 10 and 100 billion. This means that the Cuba is only obtaining an average amount of money per year. Cubas per capita of 9,900 also falls under the developing category. Cubas labor force break down falls under the developed category as the service industry is about 60.3% of the breakdown and is above 50%. This means that Cuba has the workload in the right places, but might look to increasing the service industry. The amount below the poverty line was unable to be found at any place. Cuba clearly has aspects divided into all categories of the country development spectrum. Cuba is almost completely developed population, communication, and transportation wise but it falls behind in the government and economy aspects where it matters the most. Therefore, the clear conclusion is that Cuba is a developing nation that has a few problems to sort out before it can become developed.

Work Cited

"CIA - The World Factbook." Welcome to the CIA Web Site Central Intelligence Agency. CIA World Factbook. Web. 17 Feb. 2012. <https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world factbook/geos/cu.html>.