Country Development Index is the measure of statistics such as births, deaths, income, or the incidence of disease, which illustrate the changing structure of human population or demography - that is the statistical study of populations, especially human beings. These ratios are very important because they are mostly considered to be a reliable standard while analysing census information for different countries. It can be used to understand the progress and growth of a country since human resource is a big factor when it comes to economic development. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has ranked all the countries into four tiers of human development by combining the data and measurements of education, life expectancy, and income per capita into the Human Development Index (HDI) in its Human Development Report published annually. This website will give you an overview of these indexes from the year 2008 to 2018.
Human Development Index
The Human Development Index (HDI) is a measure of economic development and economic welfare. The Human Development Index examines three important criteria of economic development and uses this to create an overall score between 0 and 1. 1 indicates a high level of economic development, 0 a very low level.
Human Development Index includes: Life Expectancy Index - Average life expectancy compared to a global expected life expectancy.
Education Index - Mean years of schooling or expected years of schooling.
Income Index - Gross National Income per capita.
The HDI gives an overall index of economic development. It has some limitations and excludes several factors that might have been included, but it does give a rough ability to make comparisons on issues of economic welfare – much more than just using GDP statistics show.
Income Index
The Index of Income Deprivation measures the proportion of the population in a region that live in under income deprivation. It is often used as a tool to assess economic inequality or for measuring income distribution or, sometimes even, wealth distribution among the population of an area. The score ranges from 0 (or 0%) to 1 (or 100%), with 0 indicating perfect income equality and 1 indicating perfect income inequality. Hence, the Income Index is a simple measure of the distribution of income across income percentiles in a population. A higher Income index represents greater income inequality which means that high income individuals receive much larger percentages of the total income of the population. Global inequality increased over the 19th and 20th centuries as measured by the Income Index, but has declined in more recent years.
Education Index
The Education Index is deemed as a component of the Human Development Index that is published annually by the United Nations, alongside the Life Expectancy Index and GDP Index, to measure the educational progression or attainment, GDP per capita and life expectancy. Ever since 2010, the Education Index has been measured by combining the average adult years of schooling vs the expected years of schooling for children, by considering a 50% weightage for each. Before 2010, the Education Index was measured by the adult literacy rate (with two-thirds weightage) and then combined with the primary, secondary, and tertiary gross enrollment ratio (with one-third weightage). The adult literacy rate is a representation of the ability to read and write, while the Gross Enrollment Ratio is a representation of the level of education from kindergarten to postgraduate education. Education is a significant component of well-being and is therefore used in the measure of the quality of life and economic development, which is a major factor in determining whether a country is a underdeveloped, developing or developed country.
Life Expectancy Index
Life expectancy is a statistical measure of the average time an organism is expected to live. Based on actuarial science, life expectancy takes into account several individual-level as well as population-level factors to arrive at a figure. It is used in pricing and underwriting life insurance and insurance products like annuities, as well as in retirement and pension planning. There are several factors that affect your life expectancy, the two single most important being when you were born and your gender. Additional factors that can influence your life expectancy include: your race, personal health, family medical history, whether you smoke cigarettes or make other risky lifestyle choices. Life Expectancy Index (LEI) is one of the indicators considered in the human development index of a country. LEI is 1 when Life expectancy at birth is 85 and 0 when Life expectancy at birth is 20.
Analysis
After analysing the data for the past 11 years, it can be seen that there has been a lot of improvement in the overall global living conditions. The Human Development Index for the years 2008 vs 2018 shows us which regions of the world have had the most growth. The results show that Australia, having the highest HDI has maintained a stable ratio throughout the span of a decade along with other developed regions like the United States of America and the United Kingdom, whilst developing regions like Asia and South Africa, have had a huge improvement in their Human Development Index. It is believed that a key reason why first world countries have grown so much is becaue they made good use of knowledge and data that is often stored in inaccessible databases, locked away behind paywalls. The developing countries should learn from the mistakes made in the past so they can have a smoother and more stable growth as well. Specially regions like Central and North Africa and some parts of Asia too.
We Can Make A Difference
We need to understand how the world is changing to work towards a better future. The world is constantly evolving. From first world countries to third world countries, everyone is striving to grow. Many people believe that the global living conditions are getting worse but data shows otherwise. Change is taking place slowly and steadily. Over the past 11 years, global living conditions have improved a lot. We should take it as a positive sign. Researching how it was possible to make progress against large problems in the past allows us to learn. Progress is possible, but it is not a given. If we want to know how to reduce suffering and tackle the world’s problems we should learn from what was successful in the past. If one wants to contribute to a better future, they should know the problems that the world is facing and learn from them.
