How Robust is the Human Development Index?

Miles Cahill ()
Additional contact information
Miles Cahill: Department of Economics, College of the Holy Cross

No 203, Working Papers from College of the Holy Cross, Department of Economics

Abstract: The United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Index (HDI) has become a standard international measure of development. However, it has been criticized on several grounds. This paper investigates how robust the HDI is to changing two contentious aspects: the component statistics and the weighting scheme. An alternative index is computed using four times as many component statistics (and only life expectancy in common) and principal components to determine weights. The results are that the alternative index is very closely correlated with the HDI, suggesting the HDI is robust to alternative specifications. However, some advantages of the alternative methodology are detailed.

Keywords: Human; Development; Index (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O11 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002-12
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:hcx:wpaper:0203

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from College of the Holy Cross, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Victor Matheson ().