Critical Vocabulary

1. UNIT 2
CRITICAL
VOCABULARY

2. WORDS ABOUT
STATISTICS

3. QUALITY OF LIFE:
The general well-being of
individuals and societies. It is
measured by wealth, environment
quality, physical and mental health,
education, leisure time, and social
belonging.

4. CORRELATION:
A mutual relationship or connection between
two or more things.
In demographics, there can be a correlation
between statistics and world development. For
example, there is a correlation between low
infant mortality rates and highly developed
heath systems. In other words, if a country has
a low infant mortality rate, they will likely have
a highly developed health system.

5. INDICATOR:
In statistics, an indicator is a value or
piece of data that signals positive or
negative change. For example, data that
shows a lower infant mortality rate in
the country of Afghanistan than last
year is an indicator that Afghanistan is
developing in a positive way.

7. WORDS ABOUT
MONEY STATISTICS
& WEALTH

8. STANDARD OF LIVING
Standard of living refers to the level of wealth,
comfort, material goods, and necessities
available to people. If a location has a “high
standard of living,” the average people there
have money to buy all the things they need and
many things they want. If a location has a “low
standard of living,” the people there may not be
able to afford all the things they need to be
healthy and happy.

9. AFFLUENCE:
Affluence means: having a large amount of
money. Wealthy people live in affluence.
Someone very wealthy is said to be
“affluent.”

10. POVERTY:
Lacking money and material possessions.
“Poverty” refers to the poorest people in a
society, while “affluence” refers to the very
richest people. They are two opposite
extremes.

11. INEQUALITY:
A lack of equality.
Wealth inequality means that some
people are rich while others are poor.
Social inequality means that some
people have privileges (like the right to
vote, right to get married) while others
do not.

13. WORDS ABOUT
“GETTING WORSE”

14. DEGRADE:
To break down.
If the health system in Afghanistan
degrades, this means it is breaking
apart and becoming worse (less
effective) overall.

15. DETERIORATE:
To become worse and worse over time.
Things often deteriorate due to neglect:
for example, if Afghanistan stops funding
its health system, the quality of health
care will deteriorate.

16. REGRESS:
To return to a former or less developed
state. If a country experiences
“regression,” this means that it has made
improvements, but the improvements
have gone away. A location may regress
for many reasons: war, famine, disease,
radical ideas, etc.

18. WORDS ABOUT
THE EARTH

19. CARRYING CAPACITY:
The maximum population size that the
environment can sustain forever, given the
food, habitat, water, and other necessities
available in the environment.
People wonder what the carrying capacity
for humans is on planet earth. We have a
limited amount of resources, but the
population keeps growing.

20. CONSUMPTION:
The using up of a resource.
If we consume all of the oil in the Earth’s
crust, what will we use to power our cars
and factories?

21. SUSTAINABLE:
Able to be maintained at a certain level.
People worry that our current oil
consumption is not sustainable - this
means that if we keep using oil at the rate
we do now, it will not last forever.
Scientists look for types of sustainable
energy (like wind power) to replace types
of unsustainable energy (like oil).

22. ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT:
A measure of human demand on the
Earth's ecosystems. In other words, a
number that measures how much
humans take from the environment. For
2007, humanity's total ecological footprint
was estimated at 1.5 planet Earths; that is,
humanity uses up resources1.5 times as
quickly as Earth can renew them.