Human Development Index

Recently, more often in the media, you can hear about the index of human development (HDI). I would like more Talk in detail about this indicator and understand how it is determined.

First of all, the Human Development Index is an economic indicator used in the UN in order to determine the quality of life in different countries. It is very important not to confuse this concept with the standard of living, it is fundamentally different definitions. The standard of living can characterize the degree of material well-being, that is, people's satisfaction with their material wealth. In this case, the average standard of living in a country can be visually represented by GDP per unit of population. While the concept of "quality of life" contains "intangible" aspects of life. This can include life expectancy and health, the opportunity to spend leisure and rest, the cultural wealth of the country, its spiritual level of development, etc.

It is quite logical that it is rather difficult to determine the quality of life, because this concept is rather multifaceted and complex, including a number of aspects, besides, it can not be expressed in monetary terms. To do this, you need to use a kind of integral indicator, but do not forget that in this case you can not consider the data to be absolutely accurate and correct.

So the integral index was the Human Development Index, which was developed in 1990 by two foreign economists: Pakistani Mahbub ul-Hakov and Indian Amartya Sen. After that, since 1993, the UN has been conducting a hard annual report on the development of this indicator, which reflects the size of the HDI for most countries of the world. It should be noted that the data that are provided by the UN are known with a delay of 2 years.

For the HDI, an alternative indicator was introduced - the poverty index, which, however, was not widely used. Perhaps the main reason for this may be a dissonant title, which compromises the capitalist system of many countries. By the way, this indicator is calculated as well as the human potential index.

In essence, the HDI contains three main indicators: the standard of living that can be estimated through gross domestic product per capita, the education index, that is, the level of literacy of the population, as well as the average life expectancy.

The indicator of education includes the level of literacy of the adult population, as well as the overall percentage of students. That is, the number of literate people among the residents of the state who are already 15 years old, and can be considered an indicator of this level. A literate person can conditionally be called an individual who can read and write the simplest text concerning his daily life. Typically, the level of literacy can be determined by census, but spend it once in 10 years. In order to test this indicator, annually carry out indirect research, with the help of which they try to find out more accurately the true number of literate people. For example, they conduct a survey of persons entering into marriage, or conscripts. It must be said that such a method is selective and can not provide an accurate and complete picture of the literacy of all segments of the population.

The human development index can range from zero to one. It is determined by the formula, where the arithmetic measures of all three indices, mentioned above, are taken into account. It is the translation of indicators into an index value, which can be expressed in a numerical value from 0 to unity, making it possible to take into account such different and incommensurable indicators in one integral index.

I would like to note that a number of countries are not included in the UN calculation. Small European countries, such as Liechtenstein, San Marino, Monaco, Andorra do not publish their data. The news in the economies of these states allow us to assume that the HDI is very high, like 10 years ago. Some countries are still not included in the UN reports, they can be divided Serbia and Montenegro, as well as Macao and Taiwan, although according to preliminary data they have a very high HDI.

Countries where the war is going on, have not defined their development index for a long time. These are such states as Liberia, Afghanistan, Somalia, etc. It can be assumed that this indicator in these states will be monstrously low.