Determination of HDI

Determination of HDI

The HDI is one of many methods of determining human development, first

introduced by the United Nations Program. It does not only focus on a

country's economic wealth instead it looks at social, cultural and

welfare criteria in a order to determine a country's quality of life.

HDI is calculated by using three factors chosen by the UN. These can

be seen below:

1. Average life expectancy

2. Adult literacy rate

3. Income (GDP per capita)

These three indicators are combined and a rank is calculated from the

highest (1.0) to the lowest (0) HDI. For example Canada which has the

highest HDI of 0.961 has the highest GDP of US$21,916. The adult

literacy rate and average life expectancy would also be high compared

to Ethiopia which has an HDI of 0.252, this is because there are

better medical facilities and schools as the country can afford to

meet the needs of the population. However in Ethiopia the GDP per

capita is only US$455 (more that ten times lower than Canada's). As a

result the life expectancy, adult literacy and income rates are very

low due to the inadequacy of nutrition, health and medical care.

It can be clearly seen from the table that countries with the lowest

HDI below 0.3 are considered to be the economically least developed

located in the 'South' e.g. Eritrea, Ethiopia, Burundi and Mali. Those

with a score of over 0.9 are associated with the 'developed' countries

of the 'North' e.g. Canada, France, Norway and USA. However there

maybe some countries within the North which may not be developed and

likewise some countries in the South e.g. Australia and New Zealand.

The HDI v...

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...eas, between different regions or different

genders. Another major criticism of the HDI is that it contains no

measure of human rights or freedom, as it is difficult to measure

compared to measuring the economic development within a country.

It can be deduced that although social and economic indicators do have

their relative

merits, they have many weaknesses. Generally, it can be said that

economic indicators measures the wealth of the country but gives

little indication of the standard of living of the majority of people.

Social indicators may seem to be better indicators because they reveal

the general standard of living in a country; however they do not

reflect inequalities in income distribution. They also don't take into

account constant review as definitions and concepts of the term

development change.