Human Development Index

World map indicating the Human Development Index (based on 2007 data, published on October 5, 2009)

0.950 and Over      0.900–0.949      0.850–0.899      0.800–0.849      0.750–0.799

0.700–0.749      0.650–0.699      0.600–0.649      0.550–0.599      0.500–0.549

0.450–0.499      0.400–0.449      0.350–0.399      under 0.350      not available

(Color-blind compliant map) For red-green color vision problems.

The Human Development Index (HDI) is a composite statistic used to rank countries by level of "human development" and separate developed (high development), developing (middle development), and underdeveloped (low development) countries. The statistic is composed from data on life expectancy, education and per-capita GDP (as an indicator of standard of living) collected at the national level using the formula given in the Methodology section below.

Origins of the HDI

The origins of the HDI are to be found in the United Nations Development Programme's (UNDP) Human Development Reports (HDRs). These were devised and launched by Pakistani Economist Mahbub ul Haq in 1990 and had the explicit purpose: ‘‘to shift the focus of development economics from national income accounting to people centered policies’’.^[1] To produce the HDRs, Haq brought together a group of well known development economists including: Paul Streeten, Frances Stewart, Gustav Ranis, Keith Griffin, Sudhir Anand and Meghnad Desai. But it was Amartya Sen’s work on capabilities and functionings that provided the underlying conceptual framework. Haq was sure that a simple composite measure of human development was needed in order to convince the public, academics, and policy-makers that they can and should evaluate development not only by economic advances but also improvements in human well-being. Sen initially opposed this idea, but he went on to help Haq develop the Human Development Index (HDI). Sen was worried that it was difficult to capture the full complexity of human capabilities in a single index but Haq persuaded him that only a single number would shift the attention of policy-makers from concentration on economic to human well-being.^[2][3]

The HDI has been used since 1990 by the United Nations Development Programme for its annual Human Development Reports.

Three dimensions in the HDI

The HDI combines three dimensions:

• Life expectancy at birth, as an index of population health and longevity
• Knowledge and education, as measured by the adult literacy rate (with two-thirds weighting) and the combined primary, secondary, and tertiary gross enrollment ratio (with one-third weighting).
• Standard of living, as indicated by the natural logarithm of gross domestic product per capita at purchasing power parity.

Methodology

HDI trends between 1975 and 2004

OECD      Central and eastern Europe, and the CIS      Latin America and the Caribbean      East Asia

Arab States      South Asia      Sub-Saharan Africa

The formula defining the HDI is promulgated by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)^[4] In general, to transform a raw variable, say , into a unit-free index between 0 and 1 (which allows different indices to be added together), the following formula is used:

where and are the lowest and highest values the variable can attain, respectively.

The Human Development Index (HDI) then represents the uniformly weighted sum with ⅓ contributed by each of the following factor indices:

• Life Expectancy Index =
• Education Index =
  • Adult Literacy Index (ALI) =
  • Gross Enrollment Index (GEI) =
• GDP =

2009 report

The 2009 report was released on October 5, 2009, and covers the period up to 2007. It was titled "Overcoming barriers: Human mobility and development". The top countries by HDI were grouped in a new category called "Very High Human Development". The report refers to these countries as "developed countries".^[5] They are:

In this report, Peru was promoted from the "medium" category to the "high development" category.

Countries not included

The following nations are not ranked in the 2009 Human Development Index, for being non-UN member, unable, or unwilling to provide the necessary data at the time of publication.

2008 statistical update

A new index was released on December 18, 2008. This so-called "statistical update" covers the period up to 2006 and was published without an accompanying report on human development. The update is relevant due to newly released estimates of purchasing power parities (PPP), implying substantial adjustments for many countries, resulting in changes in HDI values and, in many cases, HDI ranks.^[6]

Countries not included

The following nations are not ranked in the 2008 Human Development Index, for being non-UN member, unable, or unwilling to provide the necessary data at the time of publication.

2007/2008 report

The report for 2007/2008 was launched in Brasilia, Brazil, on November 27, 2007. Its focus was on "Fighting climate change: Human solidarity in a divided world."^[7] Most of the data used for the report are derived largely from 2005 or earlier, thus indicating an HDI for 2005. Not all UN member states choose to or are able to provide the necessary statistics.

The report showed a small increase in world HDI in comparison with last year's report. This rise was fueled by a general improvement in the developing world, especially of the least developed countries group. This marked improvement at the bottom was offset with a decrease in HDI of high income countries.

A HDI below 0.5 is considered to represent "low development". All 22 countries in that category are located in Africa. The highest-scoring Sub-Saharan countries, Gabon and South Africa, are ranked 119th and 121st, respectively. Nine countries departed from this category this year and joined the "medium development" group.

A HDI of 0.8 or more is considered to represent "high development". This includes all developed countries, such as those in North America, Western Europe, Oceania, and Eastern Asia, as well as some developing countries in Eastern Europe, Central and South America, Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, and the oil-rich Arabian Peninsula. Seven countries were promoted to this category this year, leaving the "medium development" group: Albania, Belarus, Brazil, Libya, Macedonia, Russia and Saudi Arabia.

On the following table, green arrows () represent an increase in ranking over the previous study, while red arrows () represent a decrease in ranking. They are followed by the number of spaces they moved. Blue dashes () represent a nation that did not move in the rankings since the previous study.

Past top countries

The list below displays the top-ranked country from each year of the index. Canada has been ranked the highest eight times, followed by Norway at seven times. Japan has been ranked highest three times and Iceland twice.

In each original report

The year represents when the report was published. In parentheses is the year for which the index was calculated.

2009 revision

The 2009 Report calculated HDIs for past years using a consistent methodology and data series. They are not strictly comparable with those in earlier Human Development Reports. The index was calculated using data pertaining to the year shown.

Criticisms

The Human Development Index has been criticised on a number of grounds, including failure to include any ecological considerations, focusing exclusively on national performance and ranking, and not paying much attention to development from a global perspective. Two authors claimed that the human development reports "have lost touch with their original vision and the index fails to capture the essence of the world it seeks to portray".^[8] The index has also been criticized as "redundant" and a "reinvention of the wheel", measuring aspects of development that have already been exhaustively studied.^[9][10] The index has further been criticised for having an inappropriate treatment of income, lacking year-to-year comparability, and assessing development differently in different groups of countries.^[11]

Economist Bryan Caplan has criticised the way HDI scores are produced; each of the three components are bounded between zero and one. As a result of that, rich countries effectively cannot improve their ranking in certain categories, even though there is a lot of scope for economic growth and longevity left. "This effectively means that a country of immortals with infinite per-capita GDP would get a score of .666 (lower than South Africa and Tajikistan) if its population were illiterate and never went to school."^[12] He argues, "Scandinavia comes out on top according to the HDI because the HDI is basically a measure of how Scandinavian your country is."^[12]

The following are common criticisms directed at the HDI: that it is a redundant measure that adds little to the value of the individual measures composing it; that it is a means to provide legitimacy to arbitrary weightings of a few aspects of social development; that it is a number producing a relative ranking which is useless for inter-temporal comparisons, and difficult to compare a country's progress or regression since the HDI for a country in a given year depends on the levels of, say, life expectancy or GDP per capita of other countries in that year.^{[13][14][15][16]} However, each year, UN member states are listed and ranked according to the computed HDI. If high, the rank in the list can be easily used as a means of national aggrandizement; alternatively, if low, it can be used to highlight national insufficiencies. Using the HDI as an absolute index of social welfare, some authors have used panel HDI data to measure the impact of economic policies on quality of life.^[17]

Ratan Lal Basu criticises the HDI concept from a completely different angle. According to him the Amartya Sen-Mahbub ul Haq concept of HDI considers that provision of material amenities alone would bring about Human Development, but Basu opines that Human Development in the true sense should embrace both material and moral development. According to him human development based on HDI alone, is similar to dairy farm economics to improve dairy farm output. To quote: ‘So human development effort should not end up in amelioration of material deprivations alone: it must undertake to bring about spiritual and moral development to assist the biped to become truly human.’^[18] For example, a high suicide rate would bring the index down.

A few authors have proposed alternative indices to address some of the index's shortcomings.^[19] However, of those proposed alternatives to the HDI, few have produced alternatives covering so many countries, and that no development index (other than, perhaps, Gross Domestic Product per capita) has been used so extensively – or effectively, in discussions and developmental planning as the HDI.

However, there has been one lament about the HDI that has resulted in an alternative index: David Hastings, of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific published a report geographically extending the HDI to 230+ economies, where the UNDP HDI for 2009 enumerates 182 economies.^[20]

See also

• Education Index
• Democracy Index
• Freedom House
• Legatum Prosperity Index
• Gini coefficient
• Gender Parity Index
• Gender-related Development Index
• Gender Empowerment Measure
• Global Peace Index
• Living Planet Index
• Gross national happiness
• Happy Planet Index
• Physical quality-of-life index
• Human development (humanity)
• American Human Development Report
• Child Development Index
• Satisfaction with Life Index
• Genuine progress indicator

Lists:

• List of countries by Human Development Index
• List of African countries by Human Development Index
• List of Australian states and territories by HDI
• List of Argentine provinces by Human Development Index
• List of Brazilian states by Human Development Index
• List of Canadian provinces and territories by HDI
• List of Chinese administrative divisions by Human Development Index
• List of European countries by Human Development Index
• List of Indian states by Human Development Index
• List of Latin American countries by Human Development Index
• List of Mexican states by Human Development Index
• List of Philippine provinces by Human Development Index
• List of Russian federal subjects by HDI
• List of South African provinces by HDI
• List of US states by HDI
• List of Venezuelan states by Human Development Index

References

External links

• Human Development Report
• Human Development Index – Updated Country Rankings (Dec. 2008)
• Technical note explaining the definition of the HDIPDF (5.54 MB)
• List of countries by HDI at NationMaster.com
• Human Development Map
• America Is # ... 15? by Dalton Conley, The Nation, March 4, 2009