Human development index as a measure of human development

pages: 193-208

Abstract

Human development is “a process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy” (Sen 1999: 3). Therefore, widening of people’s choices should be the goal of the public policies aiming at human development promotion. In order to assess the level of human development, to compare it with other countries’ achievements, or to evaluate different policy proposals, decision-makers have to rely on an accurate indicator of human development. Since gross national product (GNP) and gross domestic product (GDP) could not serve this function, the human development index (HDI) has been introduced as a more adequate measure. The aim of this paper is to discuss whether human development index reflects the basic tenets of human development. The arguments presented lead to the conclusion that the HDI does not fully reflect the ideas of human development. Since human development is much broader concept than any individual indicator could capture, country’s level of development should be assessed by the combination of different indicators. Keywords: human development, human development index