The Human Development Indicator (HDI)

The Indian economist Amartya Sen constructed a measure of human development known as the Human Development Index (HDI), first published in 1990 in the United Nations Report on Human Development (UNDP). It is updated each year and has been revised several times. The HDI synthesises several indices. It takes account of growth, and also life expectancy at birth as an indicator of how far the biological needs of a population are met, and the levels of literacy and school attendance as significant of cultural needs being met.

This evaluation of human development by the HDI is an attempt to respond to growing questionings over a number of years as to the relevance of present measures of economic development, in particular those based on GDP figures. The questioning of these figures also poses wider questions on their validity as a measure of social well-being. In 2008, the Stiglitz, Sen and Fitoussi commission on the measurement of economic performances and social progress also recalled the inadequacy of GDP, and underlined the value of measuring not only production, but also, and more importantly, consumption, well-being and inequalities. It enumerated the following criteria enabling the measurement of well-being, indissociably linked one with the other: material living conditions, health, education, individual activities including work, participation in political life, social links and relationships, the environment, economic security, and physical security. Certain orientations were adopted in the revised version of the HDI in 2010. UNDP had already developed a gender-specific measure of human development, and a poverty index. In 2010 there was a more fundamental change. In addition to replacing GDP by GNI (Gross National Income), and the fact that the duration of schooling is better accounted for, there is also an HDI adjusted on inequalities, and a gender- inequality index.

The disadvantages incurred by women and girls are a major source of inequality. They are all too often discriminated in health, education and the labour market, with negative repercussions on their individual freedoms. The 2010 Report introduced a new measure of these inequalities, constructed on the same model as the HDI and the IHDI (inequality- adjusted HDI) to give a better picture of the differences in distribution of progress between men and women. The gender-related inequality index is constructed from three principles: reproductive health, gains in autonomy, and the labour market, across five indicators: maternal mortality, adolescent fertility rates, level of instruction, parliamentary representation, and participation rate in the working population.

The alterations to the calculations have meant that term-to-term comparisons are no longer possible with earlier series of statistics. However every year the HDI, ranging from 0 to 1 according to its method of calculation, provides the best representation of levels of development across the globe. In 2010 the 169 countries classified fall into quartiles: very high levels of human development (42 countries ranging from Norway with 0.938 to Barbados with 0.788, France being fourteenth at 1.872), high levels (42 countries from the Bahamas with 0.784 to Tonga with 0.677) medium levels (43 countries, from Fiji with 0.669 to Sao Tome & Principe with 0.488, and low levels (42 countries from Kenya with 0.470 to Zimbabwe with 0.140).