Estonian Human Development Report

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CHAPTER 1 Estonian Human Development Index and its components 1.1. Global Human Development Index The measurement of human development and the paradoxes related thereto Today’s rational person is characterized by a desire to quantitatively measure all kinds of phenomena with the goal of assessing and comparing them, and also managing and directing them to change in the desired direction. For this, however, one must be sure about the direction one wants to move in. When measuring the development of society, it is necessary to understand what determines the developmental level a society or country has achieved. How important are wealth and the abundance of opportunities? In determining a country’s developmental level, what role is played by the population’s perception of the surrounding world – against the background of a scientific or religious worldview? Is the sustainability of the population and culture a precondition for a high developmental level in a country/ society, or is it a consequence? To what extent, are the developmental level of a society and the quality of life and happiness of its people related? Is there reason to believe that the highest possible quality of life of its societal members is the objective we should to aspire to? With regards to countries, it has been the custom for a long time to speak about their developmental level, but the quantitative scale for measuring developmental levels is a relatively new phenomenon. Since 1990, the UN has issued an annual Human Development Report. It has also Figure 1.1.1. The Human Development Index (horizontal line) and its components (Estonia, 2008) 1 0.9 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0 Life expectancy index Education index Standard of living index Source: HDR 2008 included a Human Development Index (HDI) calculated for each UN member state and a country ranking based on the index. According to this concept, the Human Development Index should measure the opportunities available to the population of each country, based on the assumption that an abundance of opportunities is related to a higher quality of life for the people living in that country. Every numerical composite indicator is associated with a statistical paradox: the occurrence of development should be demonstrated by an increase in the average level, while, in the case of many indicators, a higher average often results in greater inequality, indicating the disparity of the society’s development. Since this disparity results from the processes actually taking place and the particularities of individual phenomena and various speeds of development, the reduction of the inequality of various indicators requires the implementation of additional resources. Therefore the higher a country’s average developmental indicator, the more resources are required to reduce the inequality. Thus it follows that the guarantee of an abundance of opportunities is one of the primary assignments of the state for the support of positively progressing developmental processes. The calculation of the Human Development Index is based on three relatively easy-to-find indicators that characterize the country’s social and economic situation. These indicators are: • Life expectancy at birth, which indicates a population’s health and longevity; • Educational attainment, which is indicated, on the one hand, by adult literacy, and on the other hand, by the enrolment rate of students at various educational levels; • Standard of living, which is measured by GDP per capita at purchasing power parity in US dollars. A component (index) is calculated on the basis of each indicator, which is assigned a value between 0 and 1. The higher the value of the corresponding component, the higher the level of the corresponding life sphere in the country is. The HDI is calculated as the average of the three components (Figure 1.1.1.). Even though one may be somewhat sceptical about the Human Development Index as a whole, because the combination of its components is not substantively well justified, it has still turned out to be useful as a comparative assessment | 10
of countries and as a tool for monitoring the developmental dynamics of individual countries. Using the levels of single dimensions rather than the composite index is especially informative for monitoring the development of a country. Human Development Report 2007/2008 and Estonia’s place in the ranking Each UN Human Development Report deals with global problems that are important for humankind during the current year. The most recent report (UN Human Development Report 2007/2008) is dedicated to climate change. However, in the current report, we comment only the second part of the HDR 2007/2008, which includes tables with the indicators regarding the human development of UN member states. These indicators focus primarily on the Human Development Index, its components and their dynamics. Technically, the data included in these reports cannot be very fresh since the collection, quality assessment and calculation of the indicators are unavoidably a time-consuming assignment. Therefore the majority of the data in the 2007/2008 report dates from 2005. However, a new document, the Human Development Indices, was published on 18 December, 2008, which presents concretized and corrected HDI data based on 2006 data. Compared to the former document, Estonia has arisen two places in the human development ranking and has reached 42 nd place among 179 countries. Based on the HDI, the countries were categorised into three groups. • Countries of high human development (total 75); • Countries of medium human development (total 78), • Countries of low human development (total 26). Due to a lack of information, 15 countries were omitted from the ranking. Based on this division, Estonia definitely belongs to the countries of high human development, being in 42 nd place. Twenty-six European countries held higher positions in the last HDI ranking starting with Iceland (1) and Norway (2), incl. the majority of EU countries, except for Lithuania (43), Latvia (44), Bulgaria (56) and Romania (62), which are in the same group but located below Estonia. The countries with higher human development indices than Estonia include countries from all corners of the world except Africa. In America, Canada (3) and the US (15) are well ahead of Estonia; Chile (40) has also surpassed Estonia. Australia (4) is at the top of the ranking, but New Zealand (20) and Brunei Darussalam located on the island of Borneo (27) are also ahead of Estonia. The ranking of Asian countries is led by Japan (8), followed by Hong Kong (22), Israel (24), South Korea (25), Singapore (28) and a series of Arab countries – Kuwait (29), United Arab Emirates (31), Bahrain (32), Qatar (34) and also an Caribbean country – Barbados (37) surpass Estonia. Of the European countries, those with indices lower than Estonia’s include Montenegro (64), Serbia (65), Belarus (67), Macedonia (68), Albania (69), Russian Federation (73), as well as Bosnia and Herzegovina (75). Of the African countries, Seychelles (54) and Mauritius (74) belong to this group. Of European countries, the only ones of medium human development are Ukraine (82), Armenia (83), Georgia (93) and Azerbaijan (97). Of the larger countries, China is in 94 th place and India in 132 nd place. There are 26 countries of low human development, 25 of which are located in Africa. Two-year-old (previously also three-year-old) data is used to calculate the Human Development Index. The basic material for the 2007/2008 report includes data from 2005, and in the updated table that is commented on here, 2006 data was used. Life expectancy index According to UN data, the average life expectancy at birth in Estonia in 2006 was 71.3 years; as a result of standardization, the index value was calculated at 0.771. The education index includes two sub-indices. One of these shows the literacy rate of those who are at least 15 years old (with the weight 2/3), which is not measured in the majority of developed countries. In this case, an indicator value of 0.99 is assigned. The second sub-index is the combined net primary, secondary and tertiary enrolment rates -, which is calculated as the ratio of enrolled students to school-aged children and young people. The gross enrolment rate in Estonia according to UN data is 91.2% and the education index value is 0.964. Until 1995, the education index was based on the average number of study years instead of the level of formal education, which was standardized for the purposes of uniformity. Living standard index. The distribution of incomes by countries is very different. In order to ensure that the various values of GDP (especially the high values) do not have too strong an impact on the Human Development Index, suitable modifications are used when calculating the subindex that reduces its variability. Initially, only GDP values that are higher than average were modified, but since 2000, the upper threshold is used to cut off the highest GDP values, and thereafter the logarithm for the results is found. According to the UN, Estonia’s GDP value in 2006 was 19,155 US dollars per capita, which corresponds to a sub-index value of 0.877, and as an average of the three components, the average Human Development Index value (HDI) is 0.871. On examining Estonia’s ranking by the Human Development Index, we have noticed that Estonia’s position in the rankings for the separate components is quite different. Figure 1.1.2. Life expectancy in countries of high human development. The large diamond denotes Estonia 85 80 75 70 65 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 Source: HDR 2007/2008 11 |
Page 1 and 2: Estonian Human Development Report
Page 3 and 4: Estonian Human Development Report T
Page 5: 4.2. Ethnic differentiations in sat
Page 9: Preface This year, the Estonian Hum
Page 14 and 15: Figure 1.1.3. Life expectancy in co
Page 16 and 17: Figure 1.2.2. Life expectancy at bi
Page 18 and 19: to reality. The greatest inaccuracy
Page 20 and 21: Figure 1.2.9. Internal migration ev
Page 22 and 23: 12. Marksoo, A. 1992. “Dynamics o
Page 24 and 25: Table 1.3.1. PISA 2006 study result
Page 26 and 27: Table 1.3.2. Number of students in
Page 28 and 29: 1.4. The gross domestic product and
Page 30 and 31: Figure 1.4.3. Estonian GDP (right a
Page 32 and 33: 1.5. Changes in the Estonian Human
Page 34 and 35: 2.2. Health of Estonian residents i
Page 36 and 37: Table 2.2.4. Differences in life ex
Page 38 and 39: Figure 2.4.1. Healthy life years of
Page 40 and 41: Figure 2.4.4. Various accidents, tr
Page 42 and 43: 2.5. Lifestyle and behaviour as a s
Page 44 and 45: Figure 2.5.5. Smoking in Estonia in
Page 46 and 47: Figure 2.6.1. Overview of the compo
Page 48 and 49: Table 2.6.2. Use of specialized med
Page 50 and 51: dren. The majority of services are
Page 52 and 53: Figure 2.8.2. How much a health dis
Page 54 and 55: 2.10. Policy recommendations aimed
Page 56 and 57: CHAPTER 3 Quality of life and life
Page 58 and 59: Table 3.2.1. Characteristics of liv
Page 60 and 61: Table 3.2.4. An assessment of the e
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Figure 3.2.4. Difference in the job
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Table 3.2.6. Agreement with stateme
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Figure 3.3.1. Satisfaction with lif
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Figure 3.3.4. Percentage of people
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Figure 3.4.1. Types of quality of l
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Figure 3.5.1. Percentage of teenage
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Figure 3.5.4. Percentage of respond
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Arieh A., Conti C., Kutsar D., Nicg
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Figure 3.6.2. Subjective quality of
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Pieper, A. Sixsmith, Care related q
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Figure 3.7.1. The placement of Euro
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Figure 4.2.1. Life satisfaction by
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Table 4.2.1. Factors forming genera
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Annexes Annex 4.2.1. Socio-demograp
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Figure 4.3.1. Changes in the assess
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Figure 4.3.4. Attitudes of the Esto
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olds considered themselves to be pa
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Table 4.4.3. Agreement of the Russi
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Table 4.5.2. The prospects of non-E
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Figure 4.5.4. Certainty of Estonian
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mote equal opportunities. At the (e
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CHAPTER 5 Quality of life in a cons
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Figure 5.2.1. GDP and AIC per capit
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Figure 5.2.3. Distribution of consu
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Figure 5.2.4. Indexes of environmen
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Table 5.3.1. Comparison of countrie
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Figure 5.3.3. Comparison of types o
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Table 5.3.5. Connections between po
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Table 5.4.1. Who and what are the f
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Table 5.4.3. Young people’s asses
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Figure 5.4.6. Time spent on the con
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Table 5.4.6. The perception of prob
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5.6. Summary To briefly summarize t
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Table 6.2.1. Objective and subjecti
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Figure 6.2.4. Relationship between
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Figure 6.2.7. Difference between th
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Figure 6.3.1. GDP, government secto
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Figure 6.3.3. Employed 15-74-year-o
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Figure 6.3.8. Percentage of social
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References 1. Aaviksoo, A., G. Paat
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Figure 6.4.1. Labour market flexibi
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Figure 6.4.3. Creations of jobs ind
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Figure 6.4.5. Public expenditures o
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Figure 6.4.6. Ratio of the particip
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6.5. Cities as development engines
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Table 6.5.2. Existence of developme
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have been underfinanced or are not
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Table 7.1. Factors that favour and
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Table 7.2. Potential economic devel
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Authors Chapter 1 Ene-Margit Tiit,
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Margit Keller (PhD) is a Senior Res
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Special prizes Estonian Human Devel
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Estonian Human Development Report H
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Estonian Human Development Report H
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Estonian Human Development Report T
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Honorable mentions Estonian Human D
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Estonian Human Development Report P
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Estonian Human Development Report A
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Estonian Human Development Report T
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Estonian Human Development Report

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