A reassessment of the human development index via data envelopment analysis

D K Despotis ()
Additional contact information
D K Despotis: University of Piraeus

Journal of the Operational Research Society, 2005, vol. 56, issue 8, 969-980

Abstract: Abstract To consider different aspects of life when measuring human development, the United Nations Development Program introduced the Human Development Index (HDI). The HDI is a composite index of socioeconomic indicators that reflect three major dimensions of human development: longevity, knowledge and standard of living. In this paper, the assessment of the HDI is reconsidered in the light of data envelopment analysis (DEA). Instead of a simple rank of the countries, human development is benchmarked on the basis of empirical observations of best practice countries. First, on the same line as HDI, we develop a DEA-like model to assess the relative performance of the countries in human development. Then we extend our calculations with a post-DEA model to derive global estimates of a new development index by using common weights for the socioeconomic indicators. Finally, we introduce the transformation paradigm in the assessment of human development. We develop a DEA model to estimate the relative efficiency of the countries in converting income to knowledge and life opportunities.

Keywords: human development index; data envelopment analysis; development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (134)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1057/palgrave.jors.2601927 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:jorsoc:v:56:y:2005:i:8:d:10.1057_palgrave.jors.2601927

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... search/journal/41274

DOI: 10.1057/palgrave.jors.2601927

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of the Operational Research Society is currently edited by Tom Archibald and Jonathan Crook

More articles in Journal of the Operational Research Society from Palgrave Macmillan, The OR Society
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().