DATA-150-Emily-Pettinato

Human Development Index

Since this is a course on human development, I think you should be aware there exists a “Human Development Index (HDI)”. This index attempts to quantify the level of human development of a country. It was developed by Pakistani economist Mahbub ul Haq and Indian Nobel laureate Amartya Sen. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) compiles the HDI of 189 countries in their annual Human Development Report. You can see the latest rankings here. It attempts to place people at the center of the development process in terms of economic debate, policy, and advocacy, and is framed in terms of whether people are able to “be” and “do” desirable things in life. The indicators used in the 2020 report were life expectancy at birth, expected years of schooling for children, mean years of schooling for adults, and gross national income per capita. These indicators are used to create a health index, an education index, and an income index, each with a value between 0 and 1. Read this for an overview.

Do you think additional information or data could be added to the HDI calculation to possibly improve it or make it a more accurate measurement of human development? If yes, what things? If no, why no?

I believe that the addition of other data sets could be benefiticial in improving the accuracy of the Human Development Index. These data sets could include a measure of the gender equality in the nation, which can greatly impact what people are expected or even allowed to do, especially in terms of women’s rights. Another factor that could help improve HDI accuracy is the gross domestic product. As Tyler Cowen talks about in his interview with Ezra Klein, economic growth drives all future growth. Put in the most basic of terms, that is what developement is, the growth of a country as a whole. A third measure that I think would help improve accuracy would be the incusion of the percent of citizens living in poverty. As I mentioned before, development refers to the country as a whole. Gross national income per capita can be easily skewed and can potientially hide huge disparities in the population. The Human Development Index refers to the entire population of a country, and what they are able to do given their circumstances. If anything, because the HDI should reflect the standard of living in the country, it is especially important to take into account those who are on the low end of the country’s income index. By only using GNI, the HDI does not get an accurate picture of how wealth is distributed in the country and therefore isnt showing an accurate respresntation of development.