Mathematics and Statistics 5(1): 25-32, 2017 http://www.hrpub.org DOI: 10.13189/ms.2017.050104 Social Development of Iraqi Governorates in Comparison Iftikhar I. M. Naqash University of Mustansiriya, Iraq Copyright©2017 by authors, all rights reserved. Authors agree that this article remains permanently open access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International License Abstract Inequitable distribution of investment funds on 2) [2] saw social index (SI) as “a parsimonious set of specific governorates and the autonomy of the Kurdistan Region with indices covering a broad range of social concerns.” This set own investment policy are often mentioned as the main includes statistics similar to economic statistics of the causes of the huge regional differences in social national accounts which are intended to provide a basis for development in Iraq. In this paper, the differences in social making concise, comprehensive and balanced judgments development among 18 Iraqi governorates will be analyzed about the conditions of major aspects of society as accurate by using two different methods: first, 12 indicators of measures of a good society. The concept covers education, health and economic level are given equal interpretation of cultural signs, simple statistical measures, weights and the length of the distance between every and complex statistical indexes related to sets of domains. governorate and the governorate with the maximum These are used to assess the effectiveness of policy in standardized score for each individual indicator is combined addressing important social issues. into a Composite Regional Social Development Index In this context it is important to note that Morris (1979) (CRSDIequal); second, unequal weights are given for each combined three indicators (life expectancy at birth, infant indicator depending on the indicator’s loading in the first mortality and adult literacy) to construct the physical quality principal component to identify the weight of that indicator of life index (PQLI) and used it for a cross-country in a Composite Regional Social Development Index (CRSDI comparison. This was a pioneering attempt in constructing a unequal). Both methods will result in the same ranking of the 18 composite index of development. Ray (1989) [16] used as governorates with respect to their social development level. many as 13 physical indicators in the construction of a composite index (SDI) for measuring social development Keywords Social Development, Social Index, across 40 countries. UNDP has introduced human Composite Regional Social Development Index, Principal development index (HDI) for a large number of countries in Component, Human Development Index, Physical quality of 1990 and has been bringing out HDI every year since then. Life Index HDI is based on three indicators, namely, life expectancy at birth; educational attainment as measured by a combination of adult literacy and the combined first-, second- and third-level gross enrolment ratio; and standard of living 1 . Introduction measured by real GDP per capita (PPP$).While both PQLI and HDI similarly consider only three indicators, the main Development is a process of social change, not merely a difference between the two is the inclusion of income in HDI set of policies and programs instituted for some specific and the exclusion of the same from PQLI. Thus, the HDI results. Social Development refers to qualitative changes in represents both physical and financial attributes of the structure and functioning of the society that help the development whereas the PQLI only the physical aspects of society to better realize its aims and objectives. Measuring life. In contrast, the SDI captures 13 physical social Social Development is difficult because it requires the indicators to represent more areas of social concern. Further, combined interpretation of many possible indicators. The PQLI and HDI are weighted sums of indicators having equal objective established by the Organization for Economic weights. SDI, on the other hand, is associated with an Co-operation and Development (OECD, 1973: page 7) [14], objective method of deriving weights for combining multiple council was to” undertake a concerted effort to achieve physical indicators. standardized definitions of the social goal areas for which In this paper argues the regional disparities of Social systematic indicators and assessments are most needed, and Development level in the Iraqi governorates, a number of to develop the central concepts and principles which could indicators (12) socio-economic indicator of Education, guide the organization and member governments in the Health and Economic are employed to compare (18) preparation of such indicators”. Atkinson et al. (2002: page governorate of Iraq. Applied two different methods to 26 Social Development of Iraqi Governorates in Comparison compute the Social Development Index, the first consider the the axes of a space which each governorate being presented length of the distance vector between every governorate and by a vector. In the standardized data matrix each governorate the governorate with the maximum standardized score for can be mapped as an m- dimensional vector in the space of individual indicator (the governorate with ideal score), the selected indicators. The distance between any two such combining them into a Composite Regional Index (equal vectors may then be measured by the length of the so-called weights)and there by ranking governorates with respect to distance vector. their Social Development level (CRSDIequal), the second We can be concerned with the distance vector between method dependent essentially on the Principal Component governorate (i) and the governorate with the maximum techniques consider the variables loading in the first standardized score (ideal score) for an individual Principal Component to identified the weights indicators governorate. The length of the distance vector ( di ) from the (unequal weights) in this Social Development Index ideal governorates for governorate (i) containing (m) (CRSDIunequal). This study tried to determine a scale of Social components is then measured by Development priorities for the Iraqi governorates in the. m 2 This study is divided in four sections. Section 1 deals with di = ∑ j=1 (zij − z0 j ) i=1, 2, 3, … n 1.1 methodological issues of using social indicators having equal weights and those of assigning weights to the where ( z0 j ) is the highest standardized score for indicator indicators for obtaining a composite regional social development index (CRSDI). In section 2, the data set of the ( j ).The lower the ( di ) the better the position of governorate analysis will be presented and discussed. Then, section 3 (i) relative to the ideal governorate. We can rank different displays the empirical results across Iraqi governorates. This governorates according to the value of ( d ). section consists of two subsections: one deals with the i composite development index having equal weights, and the We may wish to express these measures in the form of an other with the unequal weights approaches that we use. index whose values are between 1 and 0. In fact we have a Finally, section 4 sets out some conclusion. The appendix number of options. We may follow the approach suggested contains empirical results. by Noorbakhsh (1998)[12] and define the Composite Social Development Index (CRSDI) as follows: d = − i 2. Methodological Issues SDI i 1 i=1, 2, 3, … n 1.2 d + kSd There had been some attempts in the past for construction of a composite index of development by combining where d and S d are the mean and standard deviation of indicators, but such efforts have been gaining acceptance di , k is the normal deviate corresponding to the confidence after the introduction of PQLI. United Nations Research probability. So, k=2.57 present table value on a t- Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) laid emphasis in distribution with significance level (0.99). In practice, for improving development statistics since the early 1960s. The approximation value k=2.6 all governorate fell within the living indexes of Drewnowski and Scott (1966) and required range. McGranahan et al. (1972) [9] are examples of the early attempts in measuring the level of living and the basic needs. There are various methods of combining different 2.2. Principal Component Analysis indicators into a composite index which can be classified in Principal Component Analysis is a standard statistical tool, two broad categories: First, intuitive methods which consider (Biswas and Caliendo, 2001-2002)[3] have used the first the indicators as equally important (equal weights), and second, objective methods which consider some indicators as principal component of the variance covariance matrix of the more important than others assigning them different weights. HDI indicators (life expectancy, education and GDP) as an One method from each category will be displayed below. alternative to HDI, they observed that the HDI 2001 rankings of 162 countries are largely consistent with the first principal component. 2.1. Distance Matrix Principal Components are linear combinations of random We start with the matrix of data, X, containing data on (m) variables which have special properties in terms of variances; social indicators for (n) governorates. To remove the scale the principal components turn out to be the characteristic effect and to have the indicators spread around the same vectors of the covariance matrix .In effect transforming the mean with the same variance, we first standardize the data. original vector variable to the vector of principal components Conceptually social development should be defined within amounts to a rotation of coordinate axes to a new coordinate the context of all governorates as the length of standardized system that has inherent statistical properties. indicator equal to the square root of the number of Suppose the random vector X of (m) components has the governorates, the length of the standardized indicator vectors covariance matrix ∑, we shall assume that the mean vector is being equal. With this property, these vectors can constitute zero.