Human Development Index
thumb|World map representing Human Development Index categories (based on 2018 data, published in 2019).
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thumb|World map of countries by Human Development Index categories in increments of 0.050 (based on 2018 data, published in 2019).
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The Human Development Index (HDI) is a statistic composite index of life expectancy, education (Literacy Rate, Gross Enrollment Ratio at different levels and Net Attendance Ratio) , and per capita income indicators, which are used to rank countries into four tiers of human development. A country scores a higher HDI when the lifespan is higher, the education level is higher, and the gross national income GNI (PPP) per capita is higher. It was developed by  Pakistani economist Mahbub ul Haq and was further used to measure a country's development by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)'s Human Development Report Office.

The 2010 Human Development Report introduced an Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI). While the simple HDI remains useful, it stated that "the IHDI is the actual level of human development (accounting for inequality)", and "the HDI can be viewed as an index of 'potential' human development (or the maximum IHDI that could be achieved if there were no inequality)". The index does not take into account several factors, such as the net wealth per capita or the relative quality of goods in a country. This situation tends to lower the ranking for some of the most advanced countries, such as the G7 members and others.

The index is based on the human development approach, developed by Mahbub ul Haq, often framed in terms of whether people are able to "be" and "do" desirable things in life. Examples include—Being: well fed, sheltered, healthy; Doing: work, education, voting, participating in community life. The freedom of choice is central—someone choosing to be hungry (as during a religious fast) is quite different from someone who is hungry because they cannot afford to buy food, or because the country is in a famine.

 Origins 

upright=0.8|thumb|Mahbub ul Haq
upright=0.8|thumb|Amartya Sen

The origins of the HDI are found in the annual Human Development Reports produced by the Human Development Report Office of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). These were devised and launched by Pakistani economist Mahbub ul Haq in 1990, and had the explicit purpose "to shift the focus of development economics from national income accounting to people-centered policies". To produce the Human Development Reports, Mahbub ul Haq formed a group of development economists including Paul Streeten, Frances Stewart, Gustav Ranis, Keith Griffin, Sudhir Anand, and Meghnad Desai. Nobel laureate Amartya Sen utilized Haq's work in his own work on human capabilities. Haq believed that a simple composite measure of human development was needed to convince the public, academics, and politicians that they can and should evaluate development not only by economic advances but also improvements in human well-being.

thumb|upright=3.5|center|The underlying principle behind the Human Development Index.

 Dimensions and calculation 
 New method (2010 Index onwards) 
thumb|World map representing Human Development Index categories (based on 2017 data, published in 2018).
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Published on 4 November 2010 (and updated on 10 June 2011), the 2010 Human Development Report calculated the HDI combining three dimensions:

 A long and healthy life: Life expectancy at birth
 Education index: Mean years of schooling and Expected years of schooling
 A decent standard of living: GNI per capita (PPP international dollars)
In its 2010 Human Development Report, the UNDP began using a new method of calculating the HDI. The following three indices are used:

1. Life Expectancy Index (LEI) 
LEI is 1 when Life expectancy at birth is 85 and 0 when Life expectancy at birth is 20.
2. Education Index (EI) 
2.1 Mean Years of Schooling Index (MYSI) Mean years of schooling (of adults) (years) is a calculation of the average number of years of education received by people ages 25 and older in their lifetime based on education attainment levels of the population converted into years of schooling based on theoretical duration of each level of education attended. Source: 
Fifteen is the projected maximum of this indicator for 2025.
2.2 Expected Years of Schooling Index (EYSI) (ESYI is a calculation of the number of years a child is expected to attend school, or university, including the years spent on repetition. It is the sum of the age-specific enrollment ratios for primary, secondary, post-secondary non-tertiary and tertiary education and is calculated assuming the prevailing patterns of age-specific enrollment rates were to stay the same throughout the child's life. Expected years of schooling is capped at 18 years. (Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2010). Correspondence on education indicators. March. Montreal.)
Eighteen is equivalent to achieving a master's degree in most countries.
3. Income Index (II) 
II is 1 when GNI per capita is $75,000 and 0 when GNI per capita is $100.
Finally, the HDI is the geometric mean of the previous three normalized indices:

LE: Life expectancy at birth
MYS: Mean years of schooling (i.e. years that a person aged 25 or older has spent in formal education)
EYS: Expected years of schooling (i.e. total expected years of schooling for children under 18 years of age)
GNIpc: Gross national income at purchasing power parity per capita

 Old method (before 2010 Index) 
The HDI combined three dimensions last used in its 2009 Report:

 Life expectancy at birth, as an index of population health and longevity to HDI 
 Knowledge and education, as measured by the adult literacy rate (with two-thirds weighting) and the combined primary, secondary, and tertiary gross enrollment ratio (with one-third weighting).
 Standard of living, as indicated by the natural logarithm of gross domestic product per capita at purchasing power parity.

thumb|right|upright=1.25|HDI trends between 1975 and 2004

This methodology was used by the UNDP until their 2011 report.

The formula defining the HDI is promulgated by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). In general, to transform a raw variable, say , into a unit-free index between 0 and 1 (which allows different indices to be added together), the following formula is used:

 

where  and  are the lowest and highest values the variable  can attain, respectively.

The Human Development Index (HDI) then represents the uniformly weighted sum with  contributed by each of the following factor indices:

 Life Expectancy Index = 
 Education Index = 
 Adult Literacy Index (ALI) = 
 Gross Enrollment Index (GEI) = 
 GDP = 

Other organizations/companies may include other factors, such as infant mortality, which produces a different HDI.

 2018 Human Development Index (2019 report) 

The Human Development Report 2019 by the United Nations Development Programme was released on 9 December 2019, and calculates HDI values based on data collected in 2018. Below is the list of countries or territories with ’very high human development’:

  = increase.
  = steady.
  = decrease.

 Rank Country/territory HDI 2018 data (2019 report) rankings Change in rank from previous year 2018 data (2019 report) rankings Change from previous year  1      0.954   0.001  2      0.946   0.003  3      0.942   0.003  4      0.939   0.001  4   (2)    0.939   0.003  6   (1)    0.938   0.003  6   (1)    0.938   0.001  8   (1)    0.937   0.001  9      0.935   0.001 10      0.933   0.001 11      0.930   0.001 12      0.925   0.001 13      0.922   0.001 14      0.921   0.001 15      0.920   0.001 15      0.920   0.001 17      0.919   0.002 18      0.917   0.001 19      0.915   0.002 20      0.914   0.002 21      0.909   0.001 22      0.906   0.002 22      0.906   0.002 24      0.902   0.003 25      0.893   0.002 26      0.891   0.003 26      0.891   0.001 28      0.885   0.002 29      0.883   0.002 30      0.882   0.003 31      0.873   0.002

 Rank Country HDI 2018 data (2019 report) rankings Change in rank from previous year 2018 data (2019 report) rankings Change from previous year 32      0.872   0.001 32   (1)    0.872   0.004 34      0.869   0.003 35      0.866   0.002 36   (2)    0.857   0.005 36      0.857   0.001 36   (1)    0.857   0.003 39      0.854   0.004 40      0.850   0.002 41      0.848   42      0.847   0.002 43      0.845   0.002 43      0.845   0.004 45      0.838   0.001 46      0.837   0.002 47      0.834   0.001 48      0.830   0.002 49      0.824   0.002 50   (3)    0.817   0.002 50   (8)    0.817   0.004 52   (1)    0.816   0.003 52   (1)    0.816   0.003 52   (1)    0.816   0.003 55   (1)    0.814   0.003 56   (5)    0.813   57      0.808   0.001 57   (1)    0.808   0.001 59      0.806   0.001 60      0.805   0.001 61      0.804   0.002 62      0.801   0.001

 Inequality-adjusted HDI (2019 report) 

The Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI) is a "measure of the average level of human development of people in a society once inequality is taken into account".

The rankings are not relative to the HDI list above due to the exclusion of countries which are missing IHDI data.

Countries with ’very high human development’ with a missing IHDI: Liechtenstein, United Arab Emirates, Andorra, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Brunei, Bahrain, Palau, Kuwait, Bahamas, Malaysia and Seychelles.

 Past top countries 
The list below displays the top-ranked country from each year of the Human Development Index. Norway has been ranked the highest fourteen times, Canada eight times, and Japan three times. Iceland has been ranked highest twice.

 In each original HDI 
The year represents the time period from which the statistics for the index were derived. In parentheses is the year when the report was published.

 Geographical coverage 
The HDI has extended its geographical coverage: David Hastings, of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, published a report geographically extending the HDI to 230+ economies, whereas the UNDP HDI for 2009 enumerates 182 economies and coverage for the 2010 HDI dropped to 169 countries. Information Note linked to data

 Country/region specific HDI lists 

 African countries
 Argentine provinces
 Australian states
 Bolivian departments
 Brazilian states
 Canadian provinces and territories
 Chilean regions
 Chinese administrative divisions
 Ethiopian regions
 European countries
 German states
 Indian states
Tamil Nadu districts
 Indonesian provinces
 Iranian provinces
 Iraqi governorates
 Italian regions
 Japanese prefectures
 Latin American countries
 Mexican states
 Pakistani administrative units
 Philippine provinces
 Russian federal subjects
 South African provinces
 Spanish communities
UK countries and regions of England
U.S. states (American Human Development Report (AHDR))
 Venezuelan states
 World, regional (Sub-national HDI by GDL)

 Criticism 
thumb|HDI vs. ecological footprint
The Human Development Index has been criticized on a number of grounds, including alleged lack of consideration of technological development or contributions to the human civilization, focusing exclusively on national performance and ranking, lack of attention to development from a global perspective, measurement error of the underlying statistics, and on the UNDP's changes in formula which can lead to severe misclassification in the categorisation of "low", "medium", "high" or "very high" human development countries.

 Sources of data error 
Economists Hendrik Wolff, Howard Chong and Maximilian Auffhammer discuss the HDI from the perspective of data error in the underlying health, education and income statistics used to construct the HDI. They identified three sources of data error which are due to (i) data updating, (ii) formula revisions and (iii) thresholds to classify a country's development status and conclude that 11%, 21% and 34% of all countries can be interpreted as currently misclassified in the development bins due to the three sources of data error, respectively. The authors suggest that the United Nations should discontinue the practice of classifying countries into development bins because: the cut-off values seem arbitrary, can provide incentives for strategic behavior in reporting official statistics, and have the potential to misguide politicians, investors, charity donors and the public who use the HDI at large.

In 2010, the UNDP reacted to the criticism and updated the thresholds to classify nations as low, medium, and high human development countries. In a comment to The Economist in early January 2011, the Human Development Report Office responded to a 6 January 2011 article in the magazine which discusses the Wolff et al. paper. The Human Development Report Office states that they undertook a systematic revision of the methods used for the calculation of the HDI, and that the new methodology directly addresses the critique by Wolff et al. in that it generates a system for continuously updating the human-development categories whenever formula or data revisions take place.

In 2013, Salvatore Monni and Alessandro Spaventa emphasized that in the debate of GDP versus HDI, it is often forgotten that these are both external indicators that prioritize different benchmarks upon which the quantification of societal welfare can be predicated. The larger question is whether it is possible to shift the focus of policy from a battle between competing paradigms to a mechanism for eliciting information on well-being directly from the population.

 See also 

Indices

 Bhutan GNH Index
 Broad measures of economic progress
 Democracy Index
 Fragile States Index
 Gross domestic product
 Green national product
 Green gross domestic product (Green GDP)
 Gender Inequality Index
 Gender-related Development Index
 Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI)
 Global Peace Index (GPI)
 Gross National Well-being (GNW)
 Happy Planet Index (HPI)
 Human Poverty Index
 Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI)
 Legatum Prosperity Index
 List of countries by Human Development Index
 Living planet index
 Multidimensional Poverty Index
 Rule of Law Index
 OECD Better Life Index (BLI)
 Social Progress Index
 Where-to-be-born Index
 World Happiness Report

Other

 Developing country
 Economic development
 Ethics of care
 Happiness economics
 Human Development and Capability Association
 International development
 List of countries by percentage of population living in poverty
 Right to an adequate standard of living
 Subjective life satisfaction
 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

 References 

 External links 

 Human Development Index
 Human Development Tools and Rankings
  
 New demographic datasets by 'Human Development Index (HDI)’
 An independent HDI covering 232 countries, formulated along the lines of the traditional (pre-2010) approach.

 
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