3.2.1.6, 3.2.1.7 - Evaluating globalisation with evidence

Growth, development and retained benefits

More international activity can increase output without improving every dimension of people's lives.

International markets can enlarge demand, allow specialisation and support investment. Technology transfer and training can raise productivity, while taxes and wages can support services and household spending. These are mechanisms through which connections may improve development; their effects depend on ownership, skills, public policy and how much value is retained locally.

Apple's FY2024 report locates much final assembly in Asia while describing components sourced across several continents. Its regional sales totals describe customer markets, not how export earnings or profits are distributed among factory workers. A growing assembly industry may create employment, yet imported components and profits paid elsewhere mean gross export value overstates local income. Apple, FY2024 Form 10-K.

Cocoa illustrates the difference between price and welfare. A higher payment per tonne may be outweighed by a poor harvest, rising costs or unequal access to productive land. COCOBOD's September 2024 opening producer-price announcement is therefore evidence of a price decision rather than proof that every Ghanaian farmer's net income increased. COCOBOD, 11 September 2024.

Specify the beneficiary, mechanism and condition. 'Export demand creates jobs if producers can supply competitively and retain value' is more defensible than 'trade always creates development'. Compare real income, employment conditions and public services as well as output.

Integration, stability and conflict

Interdependence can encourage cooperation while transmitting shocks and creating opportunities for pressure.

Repeated trading relationships make predictable rules valuable. States and firms can gain from stable supply, finance and information, so disruption can be costly to all parties. Shared institutions can negotiate standards and disputes. WHO's smallpox programme demonstrates a different form of beneficial integration: international coordination linked resources and information with national and local vaccination and surveillance. Eradication declared in 1980 is a health outcome, not proof that all global institutions produce economic stability. WHO, history of smallpox vaccination.

A highly connected network also transmits disruption. Dependence on one route, market or critical supplier can expose distant places to conflict, restrictions or equipment failures. The EU's 2 March 2022 restriction on specialised financial messaging to seven Russian banks following Russia's invasion of Ukraine shows how network access can be used as political leverage. It does not establish that all Russian payments ended or that the measure achieved every policy aim. Council of the EU, dated restriction.

The same relationship may discourage conflict because both sides would lose income, yet unequal dependence gives one actor more bargaining power. Diversification and stocks can reduce exposure but cost money and take time. Assess stability using the severity, distribution and duration of shocks as well as the normal volume of trade. Greater integration does not alone explain why a particular conflict began.

Inequality, injustice and power

Benefits and costs are distributed through bargaining power, access and rules, rather than equally across a connected world.

Owners of finance, intellectual property and brands may capture returns that differ from those of workers or primary producers. Households also differ in skills, credit, land ownership and ability to move. A market opportunity available to a national economy may remain inaccessible to some groups; country averages can hide these differences.

Inequality describes uneven outcomes or opportunities. Injustice concerns fairness, rights and how decisions impose benefits or burdens. An unequal income comparison alone does not establish how it arose or whether a right was violated. Evidence of hazardous working conditions, exclusion from decisions or uncompensated pollution provides more specific grounds for a justice argument.

The Fair Labor Association's 2013 Apple/Foxconn verification reported completion of 356 of 360 remedial actions at three Chinese facilities while still recording working-hours violations during that year. The action count and the condition evidence can coexist: implementing actions does not automatically remove every problem. It is a dated, specified case rather than evidence of every TNC's current behaviour. FLA, 2013 Annual Report, Apple verification.

Regulation, worker representation, training and improved supplier terms can change distribution. Their effectiveness depends on enforcement and who bears compliance costs. A stronger rule may improve safety while smaller suppliers struggle to finance it. A useful judgement explains both the intended protection and the conditions affecting access; it does not assume either that all regulation helps every group or that competition always defeats it.

Environmental costs and shared protection

Global production and consumption connect demand in one place with resource use and environmental effects elsewhere.

Expanded output and transport may increase energy use, emissions, waste or habitat pressure. Environmental costs may fall on communities that receive little of the product's value. Production-based emissions count where emissions occur; consumption-based accounts attribute emissions along supply chains to final demand. These measures answer different questions, and moving production abroad can alter one country's recorded production emissions without eliminating the emissions associated with its consumption.

Technology, shared standards and international agreements can also reduce pressures. The 2022 ozone assessment reported the phase-out of nearly 99% of banned ozone-depleting substances following global controls. This illustrates coordinated reduction of a transboundary pressure, while atmospheric recovery takes time. It does not prove that every growing international industry reduces its footprint. UNEP, 2022 assessment released January 2023.

For Antarctica, local controls on research, tourism and fishing interact with climate pressures caused by emissions elsewhere. An effective local rule may protect a site while global warming continues. Shared science can inform responses, but information alone does not implement them. Consider effects per unit and total effects: a 20% reduction in emissions per product combined with a doubling of output gives 1.6 times the original emissions, a 60% total increase.

Quantitative evidence: units, change and causation

Numbers clarify the scale of change when the denominator, price basis and coverage match the question being asked.

Check the place, period, variable, unit and collection method before calculating. Current-price export value can rise because prices increase; it does not directly measure real output or physical volume. A share can fall while the amount rises if its denominator grows faster. Percentage-point change subtracts two percentages; percentage change divides the difference by the original value.

Consider this original illustrative comparison of two exporting regions over five years. It is not observed national data.

A's export value rises 20%, jobs 10% and real pay 5%, with emissions up 20%. B's export value rises 50%, but jobs rise only 5%, real pay falls 10% and emissions fall 10%. Faster export-value growth therefore does not rank a region highest on every outcome. The same numerical pay units are illustrative; a real cross-country comparison would also need comparable purchasing power and coverage.

These observations establish association, not the effect caused by globalisation alone. Technology, domestic policy, exchange rates and changes in the mix of firms could also influence the outcomes. A credible causal investigation would compare timing and mechanisms, control alternative explanations where possible and seek a suitable counterfactual: what might have happened without the change. A two-region table is not sufficient to estimate that counterfactual or a statistical correlation reliably.

Means and medians, sample sizes and missing values also matter. A regional median wage does not reveal how many people lost jobs or how the lowest-paid workers fared. Select indicators appropriate to the claim and identify groups excluded from the data.

Qualitative evidence and a supported judgement

Qualitative evidence explains experiences, priorities and mechanisms that totals alone may conceal.

Interviews, observations, documents and stakeholder accounts can show how work, income or local environments change. An interview may reveal insecurity despite an increasing average wage. However, who was invited, who agreed to speak, translation, the setting and the questions asked affect what is recorded. An identifiable employee speaking beside a manager may be less willing to discuss problems. A small, selected sample can explain an experience without representing every worker.

Analyse accounts systematically. Identify themes such as job security, training and voice; retain contrasting experiences rather than counting only convenient statements. Distinguish the participant's reported experience from the researcher's inference about its cause. A theme appearing repeatedly in interviews is not automatically its prevalence in the whole population. Consent, confidentiality and accurate representation protect participants and improve evidence quality; this lesson does not require pupils to undertake assessed fieldwork.

ASOC's 2024 Antarctic tourism information paper is primary evidence of a conservation NGO's priorities and judgement. An official meeting report is primary evidence of recorded institutional activity. Neither kind of text alone measures environmental recovery. The appropriate question is what each source can establish, considering purpose, timing and coverage. ASOC, information paper IP152 submitted 19 April 2024, ATCM47 Final Report, 2025.

Triangulation compares evidence from different methods or perspectives. Combine worker accounts with pay records, contract details and observations; combine visitor totals with site monitoring and management records. Agreement strengthens an interpretation when sources are sufficiently independent and relevant. Disagreement may reveal different places, dates or definitions rather than dishonesty. Ten reports repeating one original dataset do not provide ten independent measurements.

Build a judgement from a specific claim, evidence, causal explanation and condition. For example, 'Market access improved opportunities for trained workers in this region, but the wage median and selected interviews do not establish an improvement for all households.' This states the supported extent without making a universal claim. Compare effects across local, national and global scales, and over short and longer periods, using evidence suited to each scale.