Human Development In The World

Dimensions of human development

In order to provide a synthetic measure of human development, its different dimensions are expressed in the form of indices:

• longevity (life expectancy at birth) as a proxy for a healthy life,
• years of schooling as an indicator of access to knowledge
• an index of liberal democracy as an indicator of freedom
• and the discounted value of GDP per capita as a surrogate for dimensions of well-being not directly related to education and health.

Longevity as a measure of health is represented by life expectancy at birth, defined as the average years of life that men and women would enjoy if they continued to be subject to the same mortality experienced in the year of their birth.

As measures of educational attainment, the years of schooling (primary, secondary and tertiary) received by the population aged 15 and over are used.

GDP per capita is expressed in 1990 dollars adjusted for purchasing power parity (i.e. purchasing power parity differences). level The 1990 Geary-Khamis [G-K] dollars - the so-called Geary-Khamis [G-K] dollars.

The social variables (longevity and education) have upper and lower bounds (unlike GDP per capita which has no known upper bound) and must therefore be transformed in a non-linear way, in order to take into account that increases of the same absolute size represent greater achievements the higher the level at which they are reached, and that improvements in quality are associated with increases in quantity. Thus,

I = f (x, Mo, M) = (log (M – Mo) - log (M - x)) / log (M – Mo),

In which I is the index of the dimension under consideration, x is an indicator of a country's level of well-being, M y Mo are the maximum and minimum values, respectively, which allow comparisons over time, while log represents the natural logarithm. The index of each dimension varies between 0 and 1.

In the case of the liberal democracy index, as it considers both quantitative and qualitative changes, the transformation is linear.

I = (x – Mo) / (M – Mo)

As for GDP per capita, since this indicator tries to be a proxy for dimensions of well-being excluding education and welfare, its logarithmic transformation is performed. The logarithmic transformation assumes that the returns to per capita income in terms of human development decrease as higher//higher values are reached. Since GDP per capita has no known upper limit, without this transformation it would dominate the human development index, making it superfluous. In order to obtain the GDP per capita index, the above expression has been used, in which x, M, y Mo are expressed in logarithms.

Upper and lower limits have been set for the different dimensions of human development. Thus, for life expectancy at birth the upper and lower values are 85 and 20 years, respectively. For years of schooling, the upper and lower values are 15 and 0, respectively. Finally, the maximum and minimum values for GDP per capita, expressed in 1990 Geary-Khamis dollars, are 47,000 and 100, respectively.

The human development index increased

The indices for each dimension have then been combined, with equal weights, into a human development index.

In an attempt to reduce substitutability between the different dimensions - i.e. to avoid that the achievement of a high level in one dimension compensates for a low level in another - the indices of the different dimensions have been geometrically averaged to form the historical human development index.

If we express the non-linearly transformed values for life expectancy and education as LEB y EDU, LD to represent those of liberal democracy, and the adjusted value of GDP per capita as UNYthe historical human development index can be expressed as:

AHDI = LEB^1/4 EDU^1/4 LD^1/4 UNY^1/4

Spatial and temporal coverage

Over the period 1870-2020, 115 countries are considered, rising to 121, 146, 161 and 162 when the country samples cover periods between 1913, 1950, 1980 and 1990, respectively, and 2020. These country samples account for more than 901 TTP11T of the world's population (and almost 1001 TTP11T from 1950 onwards).

Alert: How are changes in indices measured?

How much has the level of human development improved over time? Given the way in which the index has been constructed, it is possible to use logarithmic rates of change as they are often used in the case of GDP per capita.