- Name
- Human Development Index (score)
- Indicator purpose
- Examines life expectancy, education and gross national income levels.
- Abstract
- This indicator measures economic development and economic welfare of a country. It summarizes a measure of average achievement in key dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, being knowledgeable and having a decent standard of living. However, the HDI simplifies and captures only part of what human development entails and does not reflect inequalities, poverty, human security, empowerment etc.
- Contact organization / person
- United Nations Development Program (UNDP)
- Unit of measure
- Index (has a score between 0 to 1. Lowest score is 0 and highest score is 1)
- Other characteristics
- The Human Development Index (HDI) is a summary measure of achievements in three key dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, access to knowledge and a decent standard of living. The HDI is the geometric mean of normalized indices for each of the three dimensions. An indicator score closer to one means that there is a higher level of economic development while an HDI closer to zero signifies a low level of economic development.
- Classification used
- The HDI was created to emphasize that expanding human choices should be the ultimate criteria for assessing development results and to question national policy choices.
- Disaggregation
- Health dimension is assessed by life expectancy at birth. Education dimension is measured by mean of years of schooling for adults 25 and more and expected years of schooling for children of school entering age. The standard of living dimension is measured by gross national income per capita.
- Key statistical concepts
- Calculation of each dimension can be done as follows:
i. Dimension Index (I):
ii. Minimum and maximum values (goalposts) are set in order to transform the indicators expressed in different units into indices on a scale of 0 to 1 (REF1).
iii. The HDI is the geometric mean of the three-dimension indices:
- Recommended uses
- A proxy to measure the economic development and economic welfare.
- Baseline
- 706 (2015)
Updated annually
Rank 103
- Target 2020
- No deterioration in HDI score
- Target 2030
- 10% increase in score
