Resumen de The features of development in Central America and the Caribbean
Among the many formulas for measuring the degree of economic development of countries, use is increasingly being made of instruments that consider not only the traditional economic variables like Gross Domestic Product, but also the effects of other variables, through which a more realistic profile of the situation of those countries can be obtained. In this article we present a proposal for measuring social welfare, applied to Central America and the Caribbean countries, a region that is characterized by its proximity and its economic, social and geographical similarities, among other factors. Our index contributes the novelty of having been constructed on the basis of a larger number of variables than the most widely used welfare indices. For this purpose we will use the P2 distance method for the year 2008, which integrates socioeconomic variables that permit territorial ranking of countries.
