Very much relaxed Saturday indeed. But then had to keep a check on emails. Anyway, today’s learnings – Human Development Index
Human Development Index – Features
- The Human Development Index has 3 dimensions – Long and Healthy Life, Knowledge + Education and Decent Standard of Living
- It also has indicators like life expectancy at birth, expected years of schooling, mean years of schooling, GNI per Capita on PPP basis in USD
- Dimension index for HDI includes the life expectancy index, education index and GNI index.
- This Human Development Index was developed by Dr. Mehbub Ul Haq and Dr Amartya Sen (who is also a Nobel Laureate)
- Life expectancy is calculated at the time of birth and it is the number of years which a newborn infant could expect to live if prevailing patterns of age specific mortality rates at the time of birth stay the same throughout the infant’s life.
- Education is the measure through various entities – Mean years of schooling for resident (ages 25 and above) of the country, and the expected years of schooling a child has at the starting age of schooling
- Standard of living is measured from the GNI per capita which is divided by mid year population based on the Purchasing power parity.
Limitations of Human Development Index
- Per capita GNI doesn’t talk about the income disparity or how is the income spent by the government on military and health
- The quality of learning is not considered and the knowledge from learning at home is also not considered.
- Longevity can also be distorted as the life expectancy of a person doesn’t consider how healthy the life was led.
- Life expectancy is taken as an average and factors like censorship, political freedom and religious freedom are not considered.
So this was all about Human Development Index. Stay tuned for more details!
