- There are many measures of economic development
- Single indicators e.g. number of doctors/1000 people; infant mortality rate; % of the population with access to clean drinking water
- Composite indicators include indicators such as the Human Development Index (HDI), the Gender Inequality Index (GII), Inequality Adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI), and the Happy Planet index (HPI)
The Human Development Index (HDI)
- Developed by the United Nations, it is a combination of 3 indicators
Diagram: The Human Development Index
The components of the Human Development Index
- Health, as measured by the life expectancy at birth e.g.in 2019 it was 81.2 years in the UK
- Education, as measured by a combination of the mean years of schooling that 25 year old's have received, together with the expected years of schooling for a pre-school child
- Income, as measured by the real gross national income per capita at purchasing power parity (PPP)
- Each indicator is given equal weighting in the index
- The index ranks countries on a score between 0 & 1
- The closer to 1, the higher the level of economic development and the better the standard of living
The Human Development Index scores from 1990 to 2021 (Source: UNDP Data Centre)
- A value of < 0.550 is considered low development, e.g. Senegal was at 0.514 in 2021
- A value of 0.550-0.699 is considered medium development, e.g.Bangladesh was at 0.667 in 2021
- A value of 0.700-0.799 is considered high development; e.g Thailand was at 0.777 in 2021
- A value ≥ 0.800 is considered very high development, e.g. Austria was at 0.918 in 2021