Human Development Index
Income is not the only way of calculating a person’s well-being. The HDI (Human Development Index) was created so that quality of life could be better calculated. The Human development index is divided in 3 parts: GDP per capita, life expectancy, and various measures of education such as enrollment in school and literacy rates ("Human development index, n.d."). Each part varies from 0 to 1, 0 being the lowest level of development and 1 being the highest and a country’s score is represented by the value in percent that it scores. Average out the 3 parts, and there is the HDI. Therefore, quality of life is measured instead of income per capita; this represents the strong suit of the human development index ("Human development index, n.d.").
The very first Human development report was released in 1990. The main creators of the HDI are Pakistani economist Mahbub ul Haq and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen (Briney,2013). They thought that this index had the potential to change the focus of public decisions from concentration on economic to human well-being ("About Human Development").
The human development index is a superior stat to GDP for figuring out the well-being of the population. The HDI takes into account a lot of characteristics that calculate people’s living standards. GDP per capital is a generalisation, because a small group of highly rich people can make this statistic look artificially high ("How does HDI relate to GDO? (n.d.)"). In a situation where HDI is greater than GDP, it reveals how development of a country has taken over in terms of making money. This can provide the nation with the development needed for the optimal growth, which would allow development to be sustained as growth continues ("About human development"). When GDP is greater than HDI it reveals how production has taken the place of developing the population. Due to the reduced investment in education and health, the access to these services can be more restrained. Simply because the money is reinvested back into the economy for economic growth instead of being used to increase the overall welfare of the population (How does HDI relate to GDO? (n.d.)).
The human development index was traditionally measured by using a set of fixed minimum and maximum values for life expectancy, knowledge and education measured by adult literacy rate with the combination of primary, secondary, and tertiary gross enrollment ratio, and standard of living (Noorbakhsh, 1998).
Gadrey, J. and Catrice, F,J. (2006). The new indicators of well-being and development. New York::Palgrave Macmillan.
Poverty in the United States is one of many difficult problems handled today. In 2010, 15.1% of the American population was living below the poverty threshold. But, how did the government calculate the poverty rate? The United States government uses the Orshansky poverty thresholds, which uses family budgets to determine if the family is above or below the poverty threshold. The current United States poverty measure is an absolute, headcount measure using family income as its scale of resources. However, many would agree that the poverty measure is flawed and that the poverty measure overstates how many people are really in poverty. This is a problem because resources government programs uses to help the poor can unevenly distribute. Therefore, I would like to propose a different poverty measure. In this paper, I would like to argue for a poverty intensity measure that is relative, with earnings capacity as the scale of resources and counts the household as the unit of analysis. First, I will discuss more about the flawed U.S. poverty measure; second, I will explain the four components necessary for poverty measures; third, I will make my proposal against the current measure and conclude about the two poverty measures.
A change in political policy or a within the business environment, for example, may improve the quality of life of citizens in one aspect, but have indirect effects that may simultaneously decrease the quality of life in another. It is important to look at all possible benefits and consequences of the differences between countries, in order to accurately analyze and compare their citizens’ respective overall quality of life.
Inside any type of community there are many indicators of health, but now I am going to focus only in five of them. The proper good health of communities it is a very strong matter for governments and society in general. This indicators are important because gives us objectives, data, and resources to guide us in what are the mains community problems when we talk about health. The five indicators that I am going to discuss are: access to health services, physical activities, nutrition and weight status, sexual transmitted diseases, and immunization and infectious diseases. The government program that control and give us all this information is Healthy People 2020.
The Human Development Index rates each country with a score between 0 and 1, with 1 being the most advanced, globalized country. Factors that are involved in determining a country's HDI are gross domestic production per capita, life expectancy at birth, adult literacy, and the number of persons enrolled in educational institutions. In 1975, Peru's Human Development Index was 0.643. By 2003, the Human Development Index had risen more than one tenth to 0.762. The substantial increase in Peru's HDI is a clear indication that globalization has made a positive impact.
There are many dimensions of inequality, which have the greatest impact on health outcomes. These dimensions are class, sex and gender and ethnicity. The health outcomes are different for each country. World Health Organisation defines 'health ' as "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease of infirmity" (1948). John Germov (2013, p. 16) wrote a chapter on ‘Imagining Health Problems as Social Issues’ in Second Opinion: An Introduction to Health Sociology, he mentions the ‘social model of health’ where the social determinants of health, which are economic, social and cultural factors, are being looked at closely to how these factors are linked to focus on preventing the illness.
Health stands for both the physical and mental wellbeing of individual, not only the absence of disease. The social determinants of health includes the environmental conditions, living standards, relation in between the communities, families, workplaces and healthcare facilities along with policies and
...angible aspects and so GDP should be used as an indicator in conjunction with other measures such as the Human Development Index, Genuine Progress Indicator (adjusts GDP figures income distribution) and the European Quality of life survey. This will give a more accurate and complete picture of Standard of Living.
...an HDI of 0.36. These discrepancies in levels of development have led to an exodus of people, from less developed areas to the areas that have been benefitted by development. This situation seems to depict that predicted by the Dependency theory in which the developed countries progressed due to the exploitation of peripheral nations; the same seems to be happening in India. The states that are wealthier are exploiting the poorer states. It would be difficult to imagine India having the economic status that it now has, if it was not for the terrible working conditions and wages at which the Indians are willing to work and the massive work force available in the country. Now that India has seen economic growth the government should start taking care of its citizens by implementing policies that protect the labor rights of the workforce.
By using Gross Domestic Product as the main indicator of well-being, many important factors are neglected. As defined in the New Merriam-Webster Dictionary, well-being is the state of being happy, healthy, or prosperous (1989, p.831). Economically, perhaps the only relevant state under the definition is prosperity, but in reality happiness and health have a great impact on well-being, significant enough to be recognized even when focusing mainly on wealth in numbers. If society hopes to have a more accurate and complete indication of well-being, globally or nationally, a new system of measurement must be developed, leaving GDP to its original function of totaling the dollar value of all domestically-produced goods and services sold over a period of time.
GDP measures the total value of all goods and services produced within that territory during a specified period. GDP is used to measure a country’s wealth. Basic’s of life, food, etc. shelter and clothing is not likely available to most people in poorer countries. The.
In international parlance, development encompasses the need and the means by which to provide better life for people in poor countries and it includes not only economic growth, although that is crucial, but also human development like...
The Problems of Defining Development Development is very difficult to define as it has a wide range of meanings and has therefore been used in a variety of ways, by different people or organizations at different times. For example, geographers will link development with improvements in human welfare. e.g. greater wealth, better education and health. Many geographers will measure development in terms of the countries HDI (Human). Development Index.
The critical difference between most development models and human development index is that most development models exclusively focus on the expansion of income while the human development index embraces embraces the enlargement of all human choices – economic, political, social and cultural which all affect income. Comparing countries’ GNP (or GDP) per capita is the most common way of assessing their level of development. This model of economic growth was based on a very weak foundation that was not sustainable over the long-term politically, economically or ethically. Higher per capita income in a country does not always mean that its people are better off than those in a country with lower income, because there are many aspects of human well being that these indicators do not capture. Sometimes a country with a very high level of national income recorded a very high percentage of population in poverty, illiteracy, in poor health, and a huge disparity based on gender, ethnicity and income. “The Human Development Index (HDI) is a composite statistic of life expectancy, education, and income indices used to rank countries into four tiers of human development, well-being concept based on capability approach. In which poverty is investigated as an indicator of standard of living.” It is a simple average of three indexes reflecting a country’s achievements in health, life expectancy at birth, education (measured by adult literacy and combined primary, secondary, and tertiary enrolments), and living standard (measured by GDP per capita in purchasing power parity terms). Achievement in each area is measured by how far a country has gone in attaining the following goal: life expectancy of 85 years, adult literacy and enrolments of 100 ...
Economic development typically involves improvements in a variety of indicators such as literacy rates, life expectancy, and poverty rates. Due to the fact that GDP alone does not take into account other aspects such as leisure time, environmental quality, freedom, or social justice; alternative measures of economic well-being have been proposed. Essentially, a country’s economic development is related to its human development, which encompasses, among other things, health and education. These factors are, however, closely related to economic growth so that development and growth often go together.