What Does Hdi Mean In Geography

Can Water Security Ensure Economic Growth

International development discussions are often characterized by polarized contentions on whether money or policy reform is more crucial for progress in human development . Scholars have already discussed the two possible causal chains, one that runs between economic growth and human development, and the other that runs between human development and economic growth . The causality in the first case occurs when resources from national income are allocated to activities that contribute to human development. Ranis argued that a low level of economic development would result in a vicious cycle of low levels of human development and a high level of economic development would result in the virtuous cycle of high levels of human development. Whereas in the second case, as indicated by several evidences, better health and nutrition lead to better productivity of the labor force . Education opens up new economic opportunities in agriculture , impacts on the nature and growth of exports , and results in greater income equality, which in itself results in economic growth .

Figure 2.2. Decomposed HDI versus per capita GDP for 2007.

José Goldemberg, in, 2004

Human Development Index Background

The main motivation for the Human Development Report itself was a focus on only real income per capita as the basis for a countrys development and prosperity. The UNDP claimed that economic prosperity as shown with real income per capita was not the only factor in measuring human development because these numbers do not necessarily mean a countrys people as a whole are better off. Thus, the first Human Development Report used the HDI and examined such concepts as health and life expectancy, education, and work and leisure time.

Errors In The Components

One important limitation of the HDI arises because of the high level of measurement error in each one of its components . Wolff, Chong, and Auffhammer conclude that when ranking countries by HDI, 34 percent of them are misclassified due to data errors. Importantly, in their analysis of the economic component, GNI per capita has the highest measurement error, while life expectancy is the most precise among the three components. It is not surprising that GNI per capita has the highest measurement error. Because of technical considerations, GNI per capita must be calculated for all countries at the same time. Because the collection of comparable prices for nearly 200 countries is costly and the methodology of combining all those data is complex and based on many subjective assumptions, the computation of GNI per capita is done only periodically.

Also Check: What Is The Molecular Geometry Of Ccl4

A Technique For Graph Interpretation Exam Questions Using Tea

Guest blogger Adam McAllister , geography teacher of two years, shares a strategy for interpreting graphs.

Despite my young years, it was clear that when working with data and graphs in lessons, children struggled with interpretation. Both children in key stage 3 and those studying GCSE struggled with graph interpretation. As a result, I started to use and embed TEA . A simple but effective strategy. However, was it as simple as I first thought?

Well, the answer was perhaps not. Trying to embed new strategies with children can be rather challenging as I found out! It is all about routine, routine, routine. Children have to be trained to do the things that we expect. It is just like riding a bike. You have to learn/be taught first before removing the stabilisers and much confidence!

T stands for trend. Children need to look for a trend or pattern in a data set or graph. There must be a trend to identify, otherwise, the exam question would be rather pointless in my eyes. Trends that I would ask children to look for would be the basic increase/decrease for one, but whether the data/graph fluctuates. Other things that I would train them to look for would be whether the rate of decrease and/or increase is rapid, slow, constant.

• Print Friendly

TEA Graphs in Geography

Adam McAllister

Limitations Of The Index

The HDI is a simplification and an admittedly limited evaluation of human development. The HDI does not specifically reflect quality-of-life factors, such as empowerment movements or overall feelings of security. In recognition of these facts, the Human Development Report Office provides additional composite indices to evaluate other life aspects, including inequality issues such as gender disparity or racial inequality. Examination and evaluation of a country’s HDI are best done in concert with examining these and other factors, such as the country’s rate of economic growth, expansion of employment opportunities, and the success of initiatives undertaken to improve the overall quality of life within a country.

Several economists have raised the criticism of the HDI that it is essentially redundant as a result of the high correlations between the HDI, its components, and simpler measures of income per capita. GNI per capita correlates very highly with both the overall HDI and the other two components in both values and rankings. Given these strong and consistent correlations, it would be simpler and clearer to just compare per capita GNI across countries than to spend time and resources collecting data for the additional components that provide little or no additional information to the overall index.

You May Like: Elton John Children Biological

Validity Of Development Indicators

Development is measured using development indicators. Development Indicators show an average figure for the whole country and often hide differences in the standard of living within a country.

The HDI has been used by the UN since 1990, and measures:

• wealth
• health
• educational attainment

These combine to give a score from 1 to 0 .

The UK, USA and Australia are all 0.9 and over. China, Saudi Arabia and Peru are 0.5 – 0.75. Sub-Saharan Africa and many other countries are under 0.25.

The map below shows world HDI rankings.

HDI gives a more accurate picture of a countrys situation than GNI. Countries with high GNI, such as oil rich Gulf states might not necessarily have high HDI scores, due to inequalities within these countries.

The map below shows countries by gross national income.

What Is Development Today

Hans Rosling is a Swedish demographer and teacher who has gained global fame through lively videos about global demographics, in particular at the TED conferences. If you are not already familiar, TED is an excellent resource of entertaining and informative talks from a great variety of people. Here is a TED talk from Rosling :

Rosling makes several essential points in this video:

• Many of us have misperceptions about global demographic data, such as child mortality.
• The variation within regions and within countries can be more significant than the variation between different regions or countries.
• The divide between the more-developed and less-developed countries no longer exists. Instead, there is a continuum of development around the world with no gap in the middle.
• Quality visualization is essential for understanding and communicating demographic data.

Now, let us take a look at the map of GDP per capita, of course, bearing in mind the limitations of the GDP statistic.

Second, the wealthier areas are North America, Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, and a few countries in the Middle East. These are the countries that are commonly considered to be developed. The rest of the countries are frequently considered to be developing. However, there is no clear divide between developed and developing visible on this map. Instead, there are countries at all points along the continuum from developed to developing.

Don’t Miss: Which Founding Contributors To Psychology Helped Develop Behaviorism

What Are The Criticisms Of The Human Development Index

Kirsten Rohrs Schmitt is an accomplished professional editor, writer, proofreader, and fact-checker. She has expertise in finance, investing, real estate, and world history. Throughout her career, she has written and edited content for numerous consumer magazines and websites, crafted resumes and social media content for business owners, and created collateral for academia and nonprofits. Kirsten is also the founder and director of Your Best Edit find her on LinkedIn and Facebook.

The human development index assigns numerical values to different countries as a measure of human prosperity. These values are derived by measuring levels of education, standard of living, and life expectancy. Countries with higher scores on the index are said to be better developed than those with lower scores.

The system is designed to be used to help determine strategies for improving living conditions for people around the world. It can be used to assess why countries with a similar gross domestic product have different HDI values and therefore can affect the fiscal and public policy of a nation. However, some critics argue that these measures are flawed and do not create an accurate picture of prosperity.

Critics argue that the HDI assigns weights to certain factors that are equal trade-offs, when these measurements may not always be equally valuable.

Top 10 Human Development Index

Components of HDI score 2011

Lowest 10 Counties for HDI

Notes:

Before 2011, the human development index used adult literacy rates rather than mean years of schooling.

The human development index was created by Mahbub ul Haq, and Amartya Sen.

• HDI at United Nations

Privacy Overview

Read Also: Michael Jackson Kids Not Biological

Gross National Income Per Capita

The gross national income per capita, or GNI, measures the annual income of the average citizen based on purchasing power parity, or PPP. The GNI index uses a minimum income of $100 and a maximum of $75,000. The index uses a logarithmic scale to show the decrease in purchasing power as income increases. The GNI per capita for citizens of Generica is $50,000. The income index for the HDI would be / , or 0.94.

The Human Development Index Around The World

The HDI data is regularly published by the United Nations Development Programme.

The differences across the world are very large, ranging from the highest values in North America, Europe, Japan, and Oceania to the lowest in central Africa.

To explore the change over time you can move the timeline slider below the map.

• Country-by-country perspective over the last three decades

Long run perspective from the Historical Index of Human Development

The economic historian Leandro Prados de la Escosura calculated the HDI over the course of two centuries. He refers to it as the Historical Index of Human Development.

This data is shown here to give a long run perspective on human development. As always on Our World in Data, you can add any other country to the chart.

You May Like: Algebra 1 Eoc Practice Test 2015

How Is The Human Development Index Calculated

The Human Development Index provides a single index measure to capture three key dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, access to knowledge and a decent standard of living.

The HDI utilizes four key metrics:3

• life expectancy at birth to assess a long and healthy life
• expected years of schooling to assess access to knowledge of the young generation
• average years of schooling to assess access to knowledge of the older generation
• gross national income per capita to assess the standard of living

There are two steps to calculating the HDI:

1. Forming indices for each of the four metrics

Values of each of the four metrics are first normalized to an index value of 0 to 1. To do this, goalposts of the maximum and minimum limits on each metrics are set by the UNDP, as shown in the table.

With the actual value for a given country, and the global maximum and minimum, the dimension value for each metric is calculated as:

The dimension index is therefore 1 in a country that achieves the maximum value and it is 0 for a country that is at the minimum value.

2. Aggregating the four metrics to produce the HDI

Once each of the individual indices have been calculated, they are aggregated to calculate the HDI.

The HDI is calculated as the geometric mean of life expectancy, education, and GNI per capita, as follows:

The education dimension is the arithmetic mean of the two education indices .

Who Will Rule The World In 2030

The world population is expected to reach 8.5 billion people by 2030. India will overtake China as the most populated country on Earth. Nigeria will overtake the US as the third most populous country in the world. The fastest-growing demographic will be the elderly: 65+ people will hit one billion by 2030.

Read Also: Algebra 1 Age Word Problems

Its Here: The New Britannica Kids Website

Weve been busy, working hard to bring you new features and an updated design. We hope you and your family enjoy the NEW Britannica Kids. Take a minute to check out all the enhancements!

• The same safe and trusted content for explorers of all ages.
• Accessible across all of today’s devices: phones, tablets, and desktops.
• Improved homework resources designed to support a variety of curriculum subjects and standards.
• A new, third level of content, designed specially to meet the advanced needs of the sophisticated scholar.
• And so much more!

Human Development Index By Country

What is the Human Development Index?

The Human Development Index or simply, HDI is an index used to rank countries based on human development. Human Development Index is scored using indicators including expectancy, per capita income, and education. Nations that rank higher on this index have a higher education level, a higher lifespan, and a higher gross national income per capita than nations with a lower score.

HDI is ranked on a scale from 0 to 1.0, with 1.0 being the highest human development. HDI is broken down into four tiers: very high human development , high human development , medium human development , and low human development .

Most developed countries have an HDI score of 0.8 or above . These countries have stable governments, widespread education, healthcare, high life expectancies, and growing, powerful economies.

The least developed countries in the world have HDI scores in the low human development tiers with HDI scores below 0.55. LDCs face unstable governments, widespread poverty, lack of access to healthcare, and poor education. Additionally, these countries have low income and low life expectancies, coupled with high birth rates. The HDI helps the United Nations determine which countries need assistance, specifically LDCs. The UN has held four conferences to assess LDCs and develop strategies to boost them out of the category.

Also Check: Geometry Segment Addition Postulate Worksheet

Comparison Of Hdi And Hihd

In the chart shown we see a comparison of the Human Development Index and Historical Index of Human Development , as described in the explanations above. Since all countries lie above the grey line, we see that countries tend to score higher on the HDI than the HIHD. However, if we look at changes through time, we see that although HIHD values are typically lower, they can change much more quickly since indices are derived non-linearly .4

• Data: The United Nations Development Programme is the institution that publishes the Human Development Index.
• Geographical coverage: Globally by country, world region, and HDI level
• Time span: From 1980 onwards

Historical Index of Human Development by Leandro Prados de la Escosura

• Data: Long-term perspective on the Historical Index of Human Development
• Geographical coverage: Globally by country
• Time span: From 1870 onwards

Advantages Of Using The Hdi

• HDI uses 2 types of social data and 1 type of economic data which means that the measure uses a broad range of information and is not tied up with only one measure. This is a much more accurate measure.
• The information is and collected by a range of people who ensure that the data is as accurate as possible.

You May Like: Holt Geometry Lesson 4.5 Practice B Answers

Selected Problems With The Hdi

The 1990 Human Development Report was indeed a seminal publication and numerous articles on measuring human development have since been published. Despite its success, the methodology of the HDI has been widely criticized . This is not surprising since its construction involves a series of assumptions regarding weighting, functional forms, and the selection of the policy components. In some cases, criticisms and debates have helped improve the index. Nevertheless, some limitations of the HDI remain. We focus on four of them here: measurement errors in its components, with the economic component having the greatest measurement error, historical inconsistency, unjustified trade-offs across its components, and the correlation of its components.

Access To Quality Education

MDCs can invest more money and resources because of their economies. Thus their people tend to be more educated, healthier, children are more likely to survive, and adults tend to live longer than those in LDCs. Probably the two most important or essential components to have a nations developmental status to begin to rise is through education and health care. There is a direct correlation to development and education. The more developed a nation, the more educated the population. One of the best indicators of a nations level of development is its literacy rate, the percent of people who can read or write. In MDCs, the literacy rate is usually around 98 percent, whereas, in LDCs, the literacy rate is about 60 percent. Its impact on this is that books are written for people in MDCs, and scientific advances tend to occur in these countries. Compared to LDCs, MDCs spend less of their GDP on education because their GDPs are so high. A small amount of a developed nations GDP can have a higher monetary value than large amounts coming from the GDP of a less developed nation. In terms of percentage, LDCs spend more of their GDP on education than MDCs need to. In LDCs, the children going to school often have outdated books and not written in their primary language. Often in LDCs, more schools are private than public because the government cannot fund them. Outside religious groups and nonprofit organizations support many of these schools.

Also Check: What Does Abiotic Mean In Biology