Monitoring Human Development Goals: A Straightforward (Bayesian) Methodology for Cross-National Indices

Kobi Abayomi () and Gonzalo Pizarro ()

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, 2013, vol. 110, issue 2, 489-515

Abstract: We offer a straightforward framework for measurement of progress, across many dimensions, using cross-national social indices, which we classify as linear combinations of multivariate country level data onto a univariate score. We suggest a Bayesian approach which yields probabilistic (confidence type) intervals for the point estimates of country scores—a vital, and often missing, feature in cross-national comparisons. We demonstrate our approach using the United Nations Development Programme’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), via the Maternal and Neonatal Program Effort Index (MNPI) data (Ross et al. in Trop Med Inter Health 6(10):787–798, 2001 ), and Human Development Index (HDI) ( 2010 ) as examples. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2013

Keywords: Millennium development goals; Indexing; Performance measurement; Bayesian statistics; Component analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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DOI: 10.1007/s11205-011-9946-y

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