The Human Development Index: "Handle with Care"

Kelley, Allen C.

doi:10.2307/1973733

Cited by 202 publications

(101 citation statements)

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“…It shares some features of some other well-being indicators, such as the Physical Quality of Life Index (PQLI) introduced by Morris (1979) and analyzed by Larson and Wilford (1979), which also combines three social indicators (infant mortality, adult literacy and life expectation). Surveys of the literature on the HDI are given in Kelly (1991), Sen (1992, 2000), and McGillivray and White (1993).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It does not take into account other dimensions of well-being, such as security, political participation and human rights Sen (1992, 2000), Ranis et al (2006)), or the distribution of human development within a country (Sagar and Najam, 1998, Grimm et al 2008. 1 Another criticism of the HDI is that it uses an essentially arbitrary weighting scheme of the three component indices, namely a simple average (Kelly (1991), Noorbakhsh, 1998;Srinivasan (1994), Ravallion (1997), Grimm et al (2008)). Some also argue that the implicit trade-offs implied by these weights are not transparent and may imply questionable value judgments (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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On Weighting the Components of the Human Development Index: A Statistical Justification

Nguefack‐Tsague

Klasen

Zucchini

2011

Journal of Human Development and Capabilities

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractThe Human Development Index (HDI) published in the Human Development Report (HDR) of the United Nations Development Program is calculated as a simple average of the Life Expectancy Index (LEI), the Education Index (EI) and the Gross Domestic Product Index (GDPI). This paper provides statistical support for the use of this seemingly arbitrary equal weighting of the three components by treating human development as a latent concept imperfectly captured by its three component indices. We show that a principal component analysis (PCA) based on the correlation matrix of the components leads to practically the same weights. Specifically we show that, for the period 1975 to 2005, the first principal component accounts for between 78% and 90% of the total variability in the data, and that its coefficients are positive and nearly equal. By normalizing the coefficients, the simple average weighting (1/3, 1/3, 1/3) scheme is obtained. The ranks of countries obtained using the PCA weightings are very similar to those based on the HDI. An advantage of the simple equal weighting is that one can define a simple index to measure the balance of a country's development, given its HDI which we show below.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On Weighting the Components of the Human Development Index: A Statistical Justification

Nguefack‐Tsague

Klasen

Zucchini

2011

Journal of Human Development and Capabilities

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“…The review of the HDI by Allen Kelley, published in this journal 2 in 1991 and cited earlier, was entitled "The Human Development Index: 'Handle with care'" (Kelley 1991 …”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring and Promoting Wellbeing: How Important is Economic Growth?

Podger¹,

Trewin²

2014

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“…Although some authors, such as Kelley (1991), McGillivray (1991), Dasgupta and Weale (1992) and Najam (1998, 1999), expressed their doubts in the HDI's usefulness in representing the human development levels of different countries, today it has been widely accepted as an important indicator of human well-being.…”

Section: Tr Selection and Peer-review Under Responsibility Of The Ormentioning

confidence: 99%

Well-Being of Society: The Role of Institutions vs. Government Expenditure

Yilmaz¹,

Tag²

2016

The European Proceedings of Social and Behavioural Sciences

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In this paper we attempted to analyze the determinants of country level human development. Since the human development index is a better indicator of people's well-being than GDP per capita we argue that effectiveness of government policies should be judged in terms of their contribution to human development. By using a large panel dataset obtained from various sources we analyzed the effects of government expenditures and the level of economic freedom on human development. The results provide strong support for the hypothesis that higher level of economic freedom is positively related to higher level of human development. Economic freedoms are especially important in countries with low level of human development. On the other hand, we failed to find evidence for government expenditures' effect on human development. Overall, our results indicate that a country's institutional framework, especially those that are related to economic freedoms, have a significant effect on people's well-being and development.

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The Human Development Index: "Handle with Care"

Cited by 202 publications

References 0 publications

On Weighting the Components of the Human Development Index: A Statistical Justification

On Weighting the Components of the Human Development Index: A Statistical Justification

Measuring and Promoting Wellbeing: How Important is Economic Growth?

Well-Being of Society: The Role of Institutions vs. Government Expenditure

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