The Human Development Index (HDI) is a composite index measuring achievement in key dimensions of human development:
1. A long and healthy life,
2. Being knowledgeable and
3. Have a decent standard of living.
These dimensions are assessed by the following indicators for calculating the HDI of a community
1. The health dimension is assessed by life expectancy at birth,
2. The education dimension is measured by mean of years of schooling for adults aged 25 years and more and expected years of schooling for children of school entering age.
3. The ‘standard of living’ dimension is measured by gross national income per capita (GNI)
The HDI is the geometric mean of normalized indices for each of the three dimensions.
There are two steps for calculating the HDI
Step1: Creating the “dimension index” for each of the above three indicators.
Fix the minimum and maximum values (goal posts) for each indicator.
Transform the indicators into a score between 0 and 1 depending upon where it lies between the goal posts
Maximum goal post is the highest observed value of the indicator during 1980 – 2011
Minimum goal post is the subsistence values
The dimension index is then calculated for each of the three dimensions
For education dimension,
The above equation is applied to EACH of the two sub-components
The geometric mean is calculated for the resulting two indices, thus yielding a single figure
The above equation is re-applied to the single figure to finally arrive at the Dimension index for education
Step 2: of calculation HDI:
Once the three Dimension indices are calculated, their geometric mean is derived
This geometric mean is the value of the HDI for the country
An example:
Construction of HDI of India for the year 2010:
1. LE index (L)
2. Education index (E)
Mean schooling yrs. Index
Expected yrs. of schooling index
Finally the Education index =
3. Income index (I)
In 2012, the quartiles of HDI were created for 187 countries. Countries were listed as
1.Very high
2. High
3. Medium and
4. Low
Norway, Australia and USA are at the top of HDI ranking
D.R. of Congo and Niger are at the bottom
India falls in the MEDIUM category of HDI
references:
Human development reports: UNITED NATIONS DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME (UNDP) Website. Available at: http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/human-development-index-hdi retrieved on 23rd Feb 2017 at 12: 32 PM
Park’s Textbook of Preventive & Social Medicine; ed. 23rd
HALE (Health – Adjusted Life Expectancy): http://www.ihatepsm.com/blog/hale-health-%E2%80%93-adjusted-life-expectancy
Sullivan’s index’ or ‘Disability Free Life Expectancy’ or “Active Life Expectancy” http://www.ihatepsm.com/blog/%E2%80%98sullivan%E2%80%99s-index%E2%80%99-...
QALY (Quality – adjusted life years): http://www.ihatepsm.com/blog/qualy-quality-%E2%80%93-adjusted-life-years
DALY (Disability Adjusted Life Years): http://www.ihatepsm.com/blog/disability-adjusted-life-years-daly
Differences between QUALY and DALY: http://www.ihatepsm.com/blog/differences-between-qualy-and-daly
PQLI (Physical Quality of Life Index): http://www.ihatepsm.com/blog/physical-quality-life-index-pqli
HDI (Human Development Index): http://www.ihatepsm.com/blog/human-development-index-hdi