Human Development Index
Income is not the only way of calculating a person’s well-being. The HDI (Human Development Index) was created so that quality of life could be better calculated. The Human development index is divided in 3 parts: GDP per capita, life expectancy, and various measures of education such as enrollment in school and literacy rates ("Human development index, n.d."). Each part varies from 0 to 1, 0 being the lowest level of development and 1 being the highest and a country’s score is represented by the value in percent that it scores. Average out the 3 parts, and there is the HDI. Therefore, quality of life is measured instead of income per capita; this represents the strong suit of the human development index ("Human development index, n.d.").
The very first Human development report was released in 1990. The main creators of the HDI are Pakistani economist Mahbub ul Haq and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen (Briney,2013). They thought that this index had the potential to change the focus of public decisions from concentration on economic to human well-being ("About Human Development").
The human development index is a superior stat to GDP for figuring out the well-being of the population. The HDI takes into account a lot of characteristics that calculate people’s living standards. GDP per capital is a generalisation, because a small group of highly rich people can make this statistic look artificially high ("How does HDI relate to GDO? (n.d.)"). In a situation where HDI is greater than GDP, it reveals how development of a country has taken over in terms of making money. This can provide the nation with the development needed for the optimal growth, which would allow development to be sustained as growth continues ("About human development"). When GDP is greater than HDI it reveals how production has taken the place of developing the population. Due to the reduced investment in education and health, the access to these services can be more restrained. Simply because the money is reinvested back into the economy for economic growth instead of being used to increase the overall welfare of the population (How does HDI relate to GDO? (n.d.)).
The human development index was traditionally measured by using a set of fixed minimum and maximum values for life expectancy, knowledge and education measured by adult literacy rate with the combination of primary, secondary, and tertiary gross enrollment ratio, and standard of living (Noorbakhsh, 1998).
GDP is the most widely used index for economic measurement of development, implemented in almost every country. There are a number of indexes such as GNP/I, nominal GDP and real GDP that is calculated based on the GDP values, differentiating in adjustment for changes in market prices- inflation and deflation (Investopedia. 2015.), whether to take national ownership of business into consideration which GDP does not (Texas A&M University.
A human rights based approach is used to look at the inequalities which are created within development problems, this happens when there is a biased distributions of power that slow development progress. The human rights based approach is used to ensure that the dignity of every individual is centre to decision making. The importance of adopting a human rights approach to care is that it helps to involve the service user to know what their human rights are and it guarantees that every service user is receiving a good quality service and have a feeling of safety within their care environment. Adopting a human rights approach within a care setting means that the services should always be promoting equality and respecting diversity to every individual within the service and it helps to ensure that no one is being favorited or left ignored. The human rights based approach lets individual’s voices be heard and allows for anyone who feels mistreated or unhappy with a service to make a complaint or have an formal investigation carried out. The human rights based approach is important within care as it provides staff with the resources and tools to try and help service users to strengthen their abilities which can make a huge impact
Gadrey, J. and Catrice, F,J. (2006). The new indicators of well-being and development. New York::Palgrave Macmillan.
The overall health of the population can be due impart to the living conditions in which they experience, rather than traditional risk factors of health we first think of. The umbrella term social determinants of health (SDH) can be defined as: the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live, and age, and the wider set of forces and systems shaping the conditions of daily life.
There are many dimensions of inequality, which have the greatest impact on health outcomes. These dimensions are class, sex and gender and ethnicity. The health outcomes are different for each country. World Health Organisation defines 'health ' as "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease of infirmity" (1948). John Germov (2013, p. 16) wrote a chapter on ‘Imagining Health Problems as Social Issues’ in Second Opinion: An Introduction to Health Sociology, he mentions the ‘social model of health’ where the social determinants of health, which are economic, social and cultural factors, are being looked at closely to how these factors are linked to focus on preventing the illness.
There are different type of index which are used for the calculation of the livability index or
Inside any type of community there are many indicators of health, but now I am going to focus only in five of them. The proper good health of communities it is a very strong matter for governments and society in general. This indicators are important because gives us objectives, data, and resources to guide us in what are the mains community problems when we talk about health. The five indicators that I am going to discuss are: access to health services, physical activities, nutrition and weight status, sexual transmitted diseases, and immunization and infectious diseases. The government program that control and give us all this information is Healthy People 2020.
There have been discussions among scholars in developed countries regarding economics of information. Developed countries includes Australia, New Zealand, United States, Ireland, Germany, Japan, Canada and many more are countries that have a high level of development according to some criteria. The criterion is income per capita; countries with high gross domestic product (GDP) per capita would thus be described as developed countries. Another economic criterion is industrialization; countries in which the tertiary and quaternary sectors of industry dominate would thus be described as developed. More recently another measure, the Human Development Index (HDI), which combines an economic measure, national income, with other measures, indices for life expectancy and education has become prominent. This criterion would define developed countries as those with a very high (HDI) rating.
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Human Development Report (2000) Human Rights and Human Development (New York) p.19 [online] Available from: [Accessed 2 March 2011]
The HDI is a series of measurement on the primary dimension of human development on average such as being knowledgeable, a long and healthy life, and have a decent standard of living. The education dimension is measured by the average of years of schooling for those 15 years old and above, the health dimension is assessed by life expectancy at birth, and the standard of living is measured by purchasing power or gross national income per capita. The results for these three dimensions are then aggregated into a composite index using geometric
The World Health Organization (WHO) defined health in its broader sense in its 1948 constitution as "a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity" (Who,1946).
The multidimensional poverty index (MPI) analysis is based on three dimensions (education, health and living standards) and each dimension has indicators; (education indicators are year of schooling and school attendance, health indicators are child mortality and nutrition and living standards indicators are sanitation, electricity, cooking fuel, drinking water, floor and assets). The principle for MPI is that a person is declared poor if he or she is deprived at least one third of the weighed indicators within the dimension. However, the results show that MPI is 0.332 (table 10), means at least one third of the Tanzanian are deprived at least one of the dimensions.
United Nations Development Program (UNDP). (2000). Human development report 2000. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
The achievement of universal primary education (UPE is the second of the MDGs. It requires that every child enroll in a primary school and completes the full cycle of primary schooling. Every child in every country would need to be currently attending school for this to be achieved by 2015. Considerable progress has been made in this regard in many countries, particularly in encouraging enrolment into the first tier of schooling. Few of the world’s poorest countries have dramatically improved enrolments, restricted gender gaps and protracted opportunities for disadvantaged groups. Enrolments across South and West Asia (SWA) and sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), in particular flew by 23 percent and 51 percent respectively between 1999 and 2007. The primary education net enrolment rates (NER) increased at a much faster pace than in the 1990s and by 2007 rose at 86 percent and 73 percent respectively in these two regions. For girls, the NER rates in 2007 were a little lower at 84 percent and 71 percent respectively. The number of primary school-age children out-of school fell by 33 million at g...
The role of education in overall social and economic progress is widely recognized. The right to education has been enshrined as a fundamental right in the Constitution of India, which states that: “the State shall provide free and compulsory education to all children aged six to fourteen years in such a manner as the state may, by law, determine.” The literacy rate in India has been constantly rising, improving from 64.8% in the 2001 census to 74.04% in the 2011 census. Both the central and the state governments have been paying increased attention to the need to provide “education for