The Human Development Index as Isoelastic GDP: Evidence from China and Pakistan

Abstract

Gross domestic product (GDP) is shown to possess three new desiderata. First, GDP is almost perfectly correlated over time with the first principal component of its three classical indicators. Second, this principal component is in a class of weighted indexes ancillary to GDP. Each ancillary index informs policy as to allocation of resources over the three GDP indicators. Third, a country-specific power of GDP almost perfectly predicts the United Nation's Human Development Index (HDI). These findings are brought by principal components and regression analyses of time series supplied by the World Bank and the United Nations. Axiomatic HDI computation is carried out without survey sampling, probabilistic inference, significance testing, or even HDI data.

Effect of economic indicators, biomass energy on human development in China

“…Less a similar causal effect holds with the cases of FDI and BIO. Nevertheless, a strong causal effect is found over the period shown on 0-16 quarter More importantly, in contrast to the linear causality analysis, and different from previous studies, 17,21,23,35 we notice causal effects from the HDI to energy consumption, economic growth. The wavelet causality is stronger for the periods of 1992-1994 and 2008-2015.…”

“…More so, along with economic growth, Chinese authorities should focus more on social welfare and environmental protection, which could make a dramatic contribution to enhancing the quality of life and health. This finding supports the papers of Khan et al, 6 Mustafa et al, 23 Bechtel, 21 and Yumashev et al 34 Their findings uncover that industrialization has a significantly positive impact on human development. This outcome is entirely consistent with several papers in the previous literature.…”

“…For example, based on CO 2 emission and energy consumption gathered in Southwest China, Chen et al 35 provide evidence of carbon emission per capita decouples from the human development index from 2000 to 2015 in this region. Bechtel 21 reveals that economic growth positively influences human development in China and Pakistan. Azam et al 22 assess the links among energy consumption, CO 2 emission, human development, foreign direct investment, and economic growth over 1995-2016 for China.…”

GDP <i>Is</i> Well-Being! Results in the USA and China

“…The author thanks Dr. Bethany Bechtel for her gift [4] that alerted him to the importance of GDP to us all, and for her insistence on monitoring a nation's economic indicators over time. This adaptation of [12] [35] improves upon [35] by parsimoniously linking GDP to the United Nation's Human Development Index.…”

Corrupción y Desarrollo en China y América Latina

“…En resumen, el tamaño de la economía puede diluir parcialmente el efecto negativo de la corrupción en el desarrollo. Resultados como los de Ranis (2004), Teker y Güner (2016) y Bechtel (2018) también muestran una relación cercana entre pib y desarrollo humano.…”