Executive Summary

In this project, we basically ananlyzed the economic indicators and the people’s life of 4 Asian countries: Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand. These four countries are all in south-east Asia and often times are comparable to one another. However, they stage at different development levels. We considered four indicators from primary education, urban population growth, export cost and gender distribution among employers.

Through analysis we could conclude that: 1. The most developed country among the four, Singapore, has no student loss in primary school in the past years. 2. Urban population growth are very steady in Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia. While Singapore is quite uneven among the years, might due to immigrants. 3. Philippines has a sharp decrease in export cost, as the election year in Philippine the government chaged some policies in export.

1. Children out of school, primary

Conclusion: Firstly, we started by looking at the number of children who are out of primary school from 2000 to 2014.

Surprisinly, number shows that no kid in Singapore is out of primary school while Malaysia continuously stays very low number across these years. Thailand, however, stayed zero out-of-school rate till 2006, in which it reached about 350,000 number of out-of-school children. It gradually declined each year and by the end of 2009, there was about 20,000 children and it remained zero since 2010. It went back to 400,000 in 2014. Philippines has the most children out of school among all the countries. Between 2001 and 2009, the number stayed above 1,000,000 and even climbed over 1,500,000 in 2006 and 2007. It goes to to zero after 2010 but year 2013 showed a small rebounded to about 400,000. ***

2. Urban population growth (annual %)

Conclusion: Next, we’d like to see urban population growth among these 4 countries.

Urban population growth slightly decreased from 4% to 2% in Malaysia and Thailand. Philippinies standed arond 2% over the years. Singapore turned out to have the most fluctuant growth rate. In early years, it droped to 0% in 2003 then reached to about 5% in 2008 and it evetunally quited down in recent years and remained around 2% in 2014.

3. Cost to export (US$ per container)

Conclusion: By preparing comparative bar graphs for the four countries and placing them side by side, we are able to determine the impact from having varying costs to export. Exporting is beneficial for countries and as a result, reducing the costs required to export each container is key. By looking at the trends from 2004 to 2014, we are able to conclude the following for each country: a) Malaysia over the year has seen relatively flat costs to export, as a result they have been able to sell with similar costs throughout the period with a slight increase in export costs/container starting 2013 due to lower amounts of exports given a weaker global recovery and slowdown of exports. b) Singapore has seen relatively flat line cost to export which is an indicator the country has been able to continue trading at relatively similar costs throughout the years. Additionally, in comparison to its competitor countries, they trade at the lower end of the cost spectrum which is nearing $400 per container. This is significant as Thailand and Philippines exported at nearly $800 per container throughout various years. c) Phillipines and Thailand have seen similar trends where initially the costs to export initially were drastically higher than competitors ($800), however in 2007 for Thailand and 2009 for Philippines, both countries were able to reduce their cost to export. This is important as this would promote further selling/ trading to international buyers. Nonetheless, these countries are disadvantaged as their costs to export one container is double that of Malaysia and Singapore. The export cost is an extremely important driver for a country’s economic success. The lower the cost to export, the more a country can trade and earn a surplus. Greater surplus and economic movement results in a better economic condition for locals as citizens of that country are able to earn higher levels of income and spend more on local products. ***

4. Female & Male Employers

Conclusion: From the chart we can tell that the number of Male Employees and Female Employees are slightly different. In Malaysia, the number for female employers are raising year after year from 2000. But the number of male employees are floating through out the year. In Philippines, the change of numbers are dramatically different. In 2002, they have the most male and female employees. But after that, the number dropped year by year. We also see that in Singapore, we have the floating numbers and 2013 is the peak for both male and female employees. In Thailand, the difference between male and female users are more than double the figure. It doesn’t have any dramatically ups or downs but we can see that nowadays they have a lower employment rate than years ago