Human Development and its Index

The economist Mahbub ul Haq introduced the concept of Human development in 1970 at the World Bank. He later established the concept in Pakistan’s native place as the finance minister. The economist suggested that the old measures of the concept malfunctioned to attain the actual purpose, i.e., to improve the quality of life of people. Although, the 2010’s Human Development reports state that over the past 40 years, the concept’s progress has been notable. The Human Development Index explains a composite measure of health, knowledge, and everyday living. Let’s discuss it briefly. 

What is Human Development?

Human Development refers to studying an individual’s physical, psychosocial and cognitive situation. Physical development includes the change and growth of the brain, body, senses, motor, health, skills, and wellness. 

Cognitive development includes memory, attention, learning, thinking, language, creativity and reasoning. Psychosocial development includes personality, emotions, and social relationships with people. 

What is the need to study human development?

• Human development is the branch of psychology that studies elements that can help an individual enjoy a healthy and fulfilling life. It aims to learn the different changes in a person and their relationships as they grow with time. 
• The academic disciplines study the multi-disciplinary broad concept to educate how different subjects impact and relate to each other. As the concept involves subjects like economics, sociology, psychology, biology, and anthropology, one can advance their skills and knowledge in these areas. 
• For instance, a student diving into this field follows multiple paths: education, healthcare, public policy, law, business, etc. 

What is HDI?

• HDI stands for Human Development Index and is an analyst tool that measures a country’s social and economic development. The HDI tool suggests that a country’s complete development cannot be measured only by its economic growth but also by its people. 
• Although, the social and economic measures involve the brief study of people’s health, their standard of living, education capabilities, and Gross National Income. The HDI is analyzed by the actual indices of all the mentioned factors. Though, the HDI is an overall mean of the factors. 
• In addition, it inquires about a country’s national policy. After that, it compares countries with similar GNI per capita and then asks why the human development of some countries is different despite consisting of the same GNI per capita. 

Indicators of HDI

Three main dimensions that evaluate the development of a country are its Long and healthy life, education, and standard of living. Let’s discuss them one by one- 

• Long and healthy life- A person’s long and healthy life is measured by life expectancy. It defines the number of years a newly born is assumed to survive in upcoming years. Also, it signifies all the elements of health in the HDI. It involves their year of birth and their present age. 
•  Education- The education report of an individual is measured by the estimated years of schooling. It starts from the child’s schooling entry age and the mean years of schooling, i.e., 18 years. Although, the maximum mean years of a child’s schooling is 15 years. 
• Standard of living- The standard of living of an individual is measured based on their gross national income per capita. It signifies the sum of domestic and foreign output attained by a resident’s country. 

Importance of HDI

• The HDI is an essential indicator of the overall socioeconomic situation of the country and its residents. Since the statistical tool considers the different parameters to study the development of respective areas, it is the primary way of evaluating every nation’s performance. 
• Eventually, every country receives an award rank from the United Nations Development Program annually. Although, a country that performs well on all parameters receives the higher rank. Likewise, a country that hasn’t stood well on most parameters obtains the lowest rank. Henceforth, the HDI acts as a statistical tool that supports measuring the socioeconomic parameters every year and tracks the same. 

Consequences of HDI 

• The HDI helps display the attention of media, non-governmental organizations, and policymakers to change their perspective from general economic measures to human outcomes. 
• It suggests that people and their proficiency should be the priority to identify a country’s development instead of the economic growth. 
• Consequently, the HDI is beneficial in showing the discrepancy across genders, ethnicities, socio economic groupings, between states and provinces, within countries, etc. 

Conclusion 

The promoting contradictions of the Human Development Index have raised many debates over the years. As the current version of HDI studies a few factors affecting the development of a country, the concept brought its limitations. Many analysts suggest that despite measuring a country’s long and healthy life, education, and standard of living, it still needs to consider employment opportunities and employment movement in index calculations.