DEVELOPMENT
The pdf-version - Eesti Koostöö Kogu
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1.1.<br />
UN Human Development Index<br />
Aado Keskpaik<br />
To date, the Human Development Index (HDI) has<br />
functioned as a comparative measure of the world’s<br />
countries for over 20 years. It was implemented in the<br />
first Human Development Report commissioned by the<br />
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in<br />
1990, and since then has developed into the principal<br />
gauge for regularly monitoring human development. The<br />
global table of HDI values has developed into a traditional<br />
component of the UNDP Human Development<br />
Report, being, perhaps, even the most anticipated component.<br />
It attracts the attention of the public, the media<br />
and politicians, and is used in appropriate research, as<br />
well as a tool in political debates. In connection with the<br />
20 th anniversary of the Human Development Index in<br />
2010, the Human Development Report Office undertook<br />
a thorough methodological analysis of both the Index<br />
and the criticism based thereon, and made significant<br />
changes in the calculation methods (Klugman, Rodriguez,<br />
Hyung-Jin 2011). For the better comprehension of<br />
the following, it should be mentioned that in the new<br />
method, the HDI is calculated as the geometric mean<br />
of three sub-indices – health, education and income.<br />
The health sub-index is calculated on the basis of life<br />
expectancy at birth. The education sub-index is calculated<br />
as the average of two indicators – the mean years<br />
of schooling and the expected years of schooling. The<br />
income sub-index is calculated on the basis of the gross<br />
national income per capita. However, the methodological<br />
questions related to the HDI have yet to be discussed in<br />
Estonia, and it would definitely be useful to turn our<br />
attention to this before starting to interpret, assess and<br />
draw any conclusions about Estonia’s position and the<br />
shifts thereof.<br />
1.1.1.<br />
What is the Human Development Index?<br />
Mahbub ul Haq, a Pakistani economist, is considered<br />
to be the initiator of the development of the Human<br />
Development Index. The Index was created because<br />
of dissatisfaction with income level being used as the<br />
principal measure of human development. The conceptual<br />
content of the index is based, to a great degree,<br />
on the capabilities approach to measuring well-being<br />
implemented by Amartya Sen, the Nobel Prize-winning<br />
economist from India. According to this approach,<br />
well-being and the quality of life is expressed by<br />
people’s capabilities – their ability and freedom to<br />
choose between the various lifestyles (functionings)<br />
that are ensured by the resources at their disposal,<br />
which they can realise according to their values and<br />
wishes 1 . In this approach, the most important thing<br />
about human development is not the abstract freedoms<br />
that have been recorded, but the people’s capability to<br />
utilise these freedoms.<br />
Right from the beginning, the HDI has been a<br />
synthesized compilation comprised of three dimensions<br />
of human development – education, health and<br />
income. It must be remembered that from the viewpoint<br />
of the capabilities-based approach, an attempt is made<br />
to directly calculate, using the HDI, only two of these<br />
extremely important human capabilities – the ability to<br />
acquire an education, as well as to live healthily and<br />
for a long time. The calculation of the third dimension<br />
of the Index – the income – on an equal basis with the<br />
aforementioned is not theoretically correct within the<br />
framework of a capabilities-based approach, because<br />
income should play a strictly instrumental role. But,<br />
including the income as the third dimension of the<br />
Index is justified by the fact that it is used as an approximation<br />
of all other measures of human development 2 . It<br />
seems that including the standard of living measure in<br />
the HDI has been inconvenient, but unavoidable. If the<br />
composite index were limited to only the measures of<br />
education and health, the content would be too meagre.<br />
On the other hand, the addition of the income, as the<br />
indirect representative of the aggregate of unspecified<br />
capabilities, clearly limits the analytical potential of<br />
the Index. The importance of the connection between<br />
income and human development has not been determined<br />
and, therefore, it is difficult to draw any sociopolitical<br />
conclusions from it.<br />
From the start, the structuring and utilisation of the<br />
HDI has been limited by the shortage of reliable statistics<br />
that can be compared on a global basis. Partially, this is<br />
what has determined the small number of dimensions,<br />
and the indicators characterising them that are taken into<br />
consideration by the HDI. However, the enhancement of<br />
1 The approach explored sees individual advantage not merely as opulence or utility, but primarily in terms of the lives people manage to live<br />
and the freedom they have to choose the kind of life they have reason to value. The basic idea here is to pay attention to the actual “capabilities”<br />
that people end up having. The capabilities depend both on our physical and mental characteristics as well as on social opportunities and<br />
influences (and can thus serve as the basis not only of assessment of personal advantage but also of efficiency and equity of social policies).<br />
(Sen, 1998 http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/1998/sen-autobio.html)<br />
2 „Longevity and education are clearly valuable as aspects of the good life, and also valued as constituents of the capability to do other things…<br />
the income component of the HDI has been used as an indirect indicator of some capabilities not well reflected, directly or indirectly, in the<br />
measures of longevity and education.” (Anand, Sen, 2000, p. 86, emphasis in original).<br />
8<br />
Estonian Human Development Report 2012/2013