Technical Notes Calculating the Human Development Indices—Graphical Presentation

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Technical Notes Calculating the Human Development Indices—Graphical Presentation HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2019 Beyond income, beyond averages, beyond today: Inequalities in human development in the 21st century Technical notes Calculating the human development indices—graphical presentation Human Development DIMENSIONS Long and healthy life Knowledge A decent standard of living Index (HDI) INDICATORS Life expectancy at birth Expected years Mean years GNI per capita (PPP $) of schooling of schooling DIMENSION Life expectancy index Education index GNI index INDEX Human Development Index (HDI) Inequality-adjusted DIMENSIONS Long and healthy life Knowledge A decent standard of living Human Development Index (IHDI) INDICATORS Life expectancy at birth Expected years Mean years GNI per capita (PPP $) of schooling of schooling DIMENSION Life expectancy Years of schooling Income/consumption INDEX INEQUALITY- Inequality-adjusted Inequality-adjusted Inequality-adjusted ADJUSTED life expectancy index education index income index INDEX Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI) Gender Development Female Male Index (GDI) DIMENSIONS Long and Standard Long and Standard healthy life Knowledge of living healthy life Knowledge of living INDICATORS Life expectancy Expected Mean GNI per capita Life expectancy Expected Mean GNI per capita years of years of (PPP $) years of years of (PPP $) schooling schooling schooling schooling DIMENSION INDEX Life expectancy index Education index GNI index Life expectancy index Education index GNI index Human Development Index (female) Human Development Index (male) Gender Development Index (GDI) Gender Inequality DIMENSIONS Health Empowerment Labour market Index (GII) INDICATORS Maternal Adolescent Female and male population Female and male shares of Female and male mortality birth with at least parliamentary seats labour force ratio rate secondary education participation rates DIMENSION Female reproductive Female empowerment Female labour Male empowerment Male labour INDEX health index index market index index market index Female gender index Male gender index Gender Inequality Index (GII) Multidimensional DIMENSIONS Health Education Standard of living Poverty Index (MPI) INDICATORS Nutrition Child mortality Years Children Cooking fuel Toilet Water Electricity Floor Assets of schooling enrolled POVERTY Intensity Headcount MEASURES of poverty ratio Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) Technical notes | 1 Technical note 1. Human Development Index The Human Development Index (HDI) is a summary measure expectancy has already come very close to 85 years in several of achievements in three key dimensions of human develop- economies: 84.7 years in Hong Kong, China (Special Adminis- ment: a long and healthy life, access to knowledge and a decent trative Region) and 84.5 years in Japan. standard of living. The HDI is the geometric mean of normal- Societies can subsist without formal education, justifying the ized indices for each of the three dimensions. education minimum of 0 years. The maximum for expected years of schooling, 18, is equivalent to achieving a master’s degree in most countries. The maximum for mean years of Data sources schooling, 15, is the projected maximum of this indicator for 2025. • Life expectancy at birth: UNDESA (2019). The low minimum value for gross national income (GNI) • Expected years of schooling: UNESCO Institute for Statis- per capita, $100, is justified by the considerable amount of tics (2019), ICF Macro Demographic and Health Surveys, unmeasured subsistence and nonmarket production in econo- United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Multiple Indi- mies close to the minimum, which is not captured in the official cator Cluster Surveys and OECD (2018). data. The maximum is set at $75,000 per capita. Kahneman • Mean years of schooling: UNESCO Institute for Statistics and Deaton (2010) have shown that there is virtually no gain (2019), Barro and Lee (2018), ICF Macro Demographic and in human development and well-being from annual income per Health Surveys, UNICEF Multiple Indicator Cluster Sur- capita above $75,000. Currently, only four countries (Brunei veys and OECD (2018). Darussalam, Liechtenstein, Qatar and Singapore) exceed the • GNI per capita: World Bank (2019), IMF (2019) and United $75,000 income per capita ceiling. Nations Statistics Division (2019). Having defined the minimum and maximum values, the dimension indices are calculated as: actual value – minimum value Steps to calculate the Human Development Index Dimension index = . (1) maximum value – minimum value There are two steps to calculating the HDI. For the education dimension, equation 1 is first applied to each of the two indicators, and then the arithmetic mean of the Step 1. Creating the dimension indices two resulting indices is taken. Using the arithmetic mean of two education indices allows perfect substitutability between Minimum and maximum values (goalposts) are set in order to mean years of schooling and expected years of schooling, which transform the indicators expressed in different units into indi- seems to be right given that many developing countries have low ces between 0 and 1. These goalposts act as the “natural zeros” school attainment among adults but are eager to achieve univer- and “aspirational targets,” respectively, from which component sal primary and secondary school enrolment among school-age indicators are standardized (see equation 1 below). They are set children. at the following values: Because each dimension index is a proxy for capabilities in the corresponding dimension, the transformation function from Dimension Indicator Minimum Maximum income to capabilities is likely to be concave (Anand and Sen Health Life expectancy (years) 20 85 Expected years of schooling (years) 0 18 2000)—that is, each additional dollar of income has a smaller Education Mean years of schooling (years) 0 15 effect on expanding capabilities. Thus for income, the natural Standard of living Gross national income per capita (2011 PPP $) 100 75,000 logarithm of the actual, minimum and maximum values is used. The justification for placing the natural zero for life expec- Step 2. Aggregating the dimensional indices to produce the tancy at 20 years is based on historical evidence that no country Human Development Index in the 20th century had a life expectancy of less than 20 years (Maddison, 2010; Oeppen and Vaupel, 2002; Riley, 2005). The HDI is the geometric mean of the three dimensional Maximum life expectancy is set at 85, a realistic aspirational indices: target for many countries over the last 30 years. Due to con- HDI = (I . I . I ) 1/3 stantly improving living conditions and medical advances, life Health Education Income 2 | HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2019 HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2019 Beyond income, beyond averages, beyond today: Inequalities in human development in the 21st century Example: Bangladesh Official PPP conversion rates are produced by the Interna- Indicator Value tional Comparison Program, whose surveys periodically collect Life expectancy at birth (years) 72.3 thousands of prices of matched goods and services in many Expected years of schooling (years) 11.2 countries. The last round of this exercise refers to 2011 and Mean years of schooling (years) 6.1 covered 199 countries. Gross national income per capita (2011 PPP $) 4,057 Note: Values are rounded. 72.32 – 20 Estimating missing values Health index = = 0.8049 85 – 20 For a small number of countries missing one of the four indi- cators, the HDRO estimated the missing values using cross- Expected years of schooling index = 11.20449 – 0 = 0.62247 18 – 0 country regression models. In this Report expected years of schooling were estimated for Mean years of schooling index = 6.06183 – 0 = 0.40412 Bahamas, Dominica, Equatorial Guinea, Haiti, Libya, Papua 15 – 0 New Guinea, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, and Vanuatu. Mean years of schooling were estimated for Eritrea, Grenada and Saint 0.62247 + 0.40412 Education index = = 0.5133 Kitts and Nevis. 2 Income index = ln(4,057.25) – ln(100) = 0.5594 ln(75,000) – ln(100) Human development categories Human Development Index = (0.8049 . 0.5133 . 0.5594)1/3 = 0.614 The 2014 Human Development Report introduced fixed cutoff points for four categories of human development achievements. The cutoff pointsCOP ( ) are the HDI values calculated using the quartiles (q) from the distributions of the component indi- Methodology used to express income cators averaged over 2004–2013: COP = HDI (LE , EYS , MYS , GNIpc ), q = 1,2,3. The World Bank’s 2019 World Development Indicators data- q q q q q base contains estimates of GNI per capita in constant 2011 For example, LE1, LE2 and LE3 denote three quartiles of the purchasing power parity (PPP) terms for many countries. distribution of life expectancy across countries. For countries missing this indicator (entirely or partly), the This Report keeps the same cutoff points of the HDI for Human Development Report Office (HDRO) calculates it by grouping countries that were introduced in the 2014 Report: converting GNI per capita in local currency from current to Very high human development 0.800 and above constant terms using two steps. First, the value of GNI per High human development 0.700–0.799 capita in current terms is converted into PPP terms for the Medium human development 0.550–0.699 base year (2011). Second, a time series of GNI per capita in Low human development Below 0.550 constant 2011 PPP terms is constructed by applying the real growth rates to the GNI per capita in PPP terms for the base year. The real growth rate is implied
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