ABSTRACT
Development economists have argued that interesting dynamics exist in the intergroup movement of countries in terms of several development parameters. However, standard mobility measures are aggregative in nature. They do not study intergroup variation in mobility. In an earlier chapter, we introduced the concept of partial mobility for analysing the movement of a particular group. This chapter introduces the idea of ‘jump,’ which measures the degree to which the group has progressed (or declined) from its current position. It is argued that no movement is sufficient for enhancing (or worsening) a group’s welfare. There is a perceived threshold, and any movement above that threshold may be defined as ‘jump.’ Thus, the focus of this chapter is jump, not just mobility. Jump is characterised with a set of axioms. The idea is then applied to the global data.
