Wednesday, May 24, 2017

Human Development Report 2016

Can be found here, published by the United Nations Development Program. (Also recall the World Happiness Report 2017.) From the Foreward:

"Human development is all about human freedoms: freedom to realize the full potential of every human life, not just of a few, nor of most, but of all lives in every corner of the world—now and in the future. Such universalism gives the human development approach its uniqueness."

From the Overview:

"The human development approach shifted the development discourse from pursuing material opulence to enhancing human well-being, from maximizing income to expanding capabilities, from optimizing growth to enlarging freedoms. It focused on the richness of human lives rather than on simply the richness of economies, and doing so changed the lens for viewing development results (box 2)."

Box 2: Measuring human development


"The composite Human Development Index (HDI) integrates three basic dimensions of human development. Life expectancy at birth reflects the ability to lead a long and healthy life. Mean years of schooling and expected years of schooling reflect the ability to acquire knowledge. And gross national income per capita reflects the ability to achieve a decent standard of living. To measure human development more comprehensively, the Human Development Report also presents four other composite indices. The Inequality-adjusted HDI discounts the HDI according to the extent of inequality. The Gender Development Index compares female and male HDI values. The Gender Inequality Index highlights women’s empowerment. And the Multidimensional Poverty Index measures nonincome dimensions of poverty."

Also recall Zak Stein's blog post on the importance of metrics measuring what's important. 



No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.