Measuring Human Development:

National and Sub-National Level

Multi-CO Training on Human Development

1-3 September 2009, Bangkok

Human Development Report Unit

UNDP Regional Center for Asia Pacific, Colombo Office
 Measuring Human Development
• HD cannot be directly measured
• It is done using a range of specific indictors - social and
economic statistics
• Selected indicators are aggregated to create summary
indices
– HDI, HPI, GDI, GEM etc.
• Systematic measurement started with the HDRs - key
dimensions of HD are regularly measured
 Advantages of measurement
• Specificity - providing an opportunity to evaluate
evidence for or against an argument, say, for
support to maternal health, education
• Facilitate setting goals and targets, and mechanisms
to move towards them
• Monitoring progress towards the achievement of
the goals and targets
• Through measurement, the concept of HD is
operationalised
 Issues in Indexing

• Conceptual Issues

• Data and Measurement Issues

• Aggregation Issues
 Conceptual Issues
• Indexing: narrows down an inherently broad
concept
– HDI is not the same as HD; but this is true of all
measurement in social sciences
• Choice of dimensions: does an aggregation of
the 3 dimensions - long and healthy life,
knowledge and a decent standard of living -
capture the concept adequately?
– Relevance of adding new dimensions, thematic
indices, local specificity
 Conceptual Issues
• On including Income in HDI - aims to measure
capabilities, but income is not a capability by itself
– Income is used as a proxy for the capability to have a decent
standard of living; it provides access to other functionings, so
used as a “surrogate of all dimensions of HD not reflected in a
long and healthy life and in knowledge”
• Of the indicators that go into the HDI – some reflect
the cumulative result of past efforts, not just the
present situation (such as life expectancy at birth and
adult literacy rate)
 Data & Measurement Issues

• Choice of indicators - are the indicators the best ones

to measure the various components? Is there a bias in
favour of what is inherently measurable?
• Even the best data systems cannot capture
important aspects of human choices that are hard to
measure - cultural freedoms, peace, security, conflict,
environmental concerns
• Data constraints - availability, comparability &
quality – different situations in countries
 Data & Measurement Issues

• Requirements for indicators to improve feasibility of

composite indices:
– internationally comparable
– available for large part of the world’s countries
– of reasonable quality
• The need to have comparability does not mean
neglecting regional and cultural diversities; there are
examples of attempts to modify indicators and formulae
to adapt the indices to the local situations (e.g. Bhutan)
 Data Management Capacity Issues
• Reporting time and dissemination time need to be
reduced – to minimise using outdated information
• With growing importance of advocacy, data needs to be
presented in a more user friendly way - user needs are
sometimes sidelined
• Statistical systems are not always geared for this
(originally designed to provide data on economic and
selected social indicators)
• We make heavy demands without providing attention
and support to strengthen official statistical systems to
meet these ever increasing demands
– technical support is a way forward
 Aggregation Issues

• The HDI involves combining variables measured in

different units
• GDP is in USD, life expectancy in years, literacy and
GER are shares
• for this to be meaningful, we divide by the range as
in the HDI (or the mean) to make the variables ‘unit
free’ to get pure numbers
• that vary between 0 and 1 – a useful property for
an index
Advantages of Composite Indices…
• Aggregation reduces quantity of info available by
definition – but helps to summarise situation in
one number
• It is a single-figure development indicator – easy
to understand and use
• Highlights differences between countries, but
also gender and socio-economic groups
• The HDI has been called “more comprehensible”
than many other composite indicators (Ivanova,
1994)
 To Conclude…

• HDI is admittedly a crude summary number, but

with high advocacy potential
– able to challenge the other crude but widely used
GDP per capita
• Captured attention of policy makers, media and
NGOs and expand the debate to focus on human
outcomes
• Most importantly, helped move from a growth-
centric perspective to a human centered one
 Take Away Message

NOT EVERYTHING WORTH

DOING CAN BE MEASURED

BUT WHAT IS NOT

MEASURED MAY NOT BE
DONE AT ALL
 Constraints in
calculating the HDI:
National and sub-
National Level
 The HDI
• The HDI, composed of three dimensions, intends to
capture the state of people’s lives in a country.
• Two critical areas for improvement are:
– Inclusion of additional or alternate indicators, either
to measure an existing dimension or including new
dimensions, such as environment
– More disaggregated data are useful to bring out the
variations among regions and population groups, such
as gender, sub-national HDI
• Data requirements , however, can be difficult
to meet.
 Data requirements

• Internationally comparable
• Available for a large number of countries and over
time
• Of reasonable quality
• Valid – based on identifiable criteria that measure
what they intended to measure
• Policy relevant – based on criteria that can be
influenced, directly or indirectly, by policy action
 Inclusion of additional dimension:
Environment
• Environment quality affects living standards of the
present generation and the prospects of the future
generation, with direct bearing on HD
– Indicators: Most data systems focus on economic
statistics; environment data are few, like rainfall
statistics, carbon dioxide emission;
Environmental accounting or indicators such as
air quality, is still not given attention
– International standards are still evolving
 Disaggregation by “gender”

• Gender gaps cut across levels of development; large “gender” gaps

exist in Asia-Pacific countries
– HDI does not provide any information about the differences in
capabilities between men and women
– Most official data systems do not report data by “gender” in their
system of accounting
– Disaggregated data even in basic capabilities such as education,
health and nutrition are not available for many countries
– GDI is calculated for 157 member states, globally; 10 countries in
AP do not have GDI, such as Afghanistan; many more don’t have
data for GEM
 Disaggregation by sub-national units
• Disaggregated indices by states and provinces
within the country draws attention to local
disparities in human development
• Many countries in AP now have national HDRs,
some even at sub-national level
• HDI rankings of states or provinces are a
powerful tool in the hands of politicians and
media
• However, data at sub-national levels are not easy
to obtain for many of the indicators
 Sub-national level indicators
• One example: Calculating sub-national HDI for
Bhutan
– Life expectancy data is not available and it is not
reliable because of small sample bias
– Data on gross enrollment and adult literacy rate
are not readily available
– No data on provincial income
• But, Royal government of Bhutan wants provincial
level HDI for socio-economic profiling and for
informing local resource devolution
 Sub-national level indicators:
Life expectancy at birth
• In case of unreliability of life expectancy data,
alternative indicators can be used as proxy
– Infant mortality rate (as in Chattisgarh state of India)
– Child malnutrition, say weight for age
– Maternal mortality
– If none of the indicators are available at provincial level, such as in
Bhutan, a proxy for life expectancy is computed using two options:
(1) adjusting the national life expectancy rate for provinces based
on age group distribution of population (2) using small sample
estimation method
• However, when there is a choice, it is advisable to
use a directly measurable indicator rather than an
estimate
 Sub-national level indicators:
Adult Literacy Rate
• Ready made data for this indicator is not available
in Bhutan. But Census 2005 provides region-wise
and age-wise distribution of population and
literates.
– Adult literacy rate is the proportion of the adult
population aged 15 years and older that is
literate, expressed as a percentage of
corresponding population in each region.
 Sub-national level indicators:
Combined gross enrollment rates
• Using Census 2005 data on region-wise and age-
wise distribution of population and enrollments:
– The combined gross enrollment ratio is the
number of pupils or students enrolled in primary,
lower secondary, middle secondary and higher
secondary education as a percentage of the
population in the theoretical age group (6 to 18
years) for the same level of education.
 Sub-national level indicators:
GDP per capita

• A very common issue – absence of data on GDP by provinces.

Figures on consumption expenditure per capita is easier
(available from BLSS 2007). Using average consumption of the
provinces and national GDP, provincial income is estimated
– Assumed that the distribution of share of consumption expenditure
across provinces remains same as the share of income across provinces
• Alternative: Provincial income can be estimated if sector wise
data are available for all provinces, as in case of Chhattisgarh,
India.
• No method is free from limitations; best judgment is called for.
 Implications
• Growing emphasis on HD has increased the demands for data from
National Statistical Systems
• More disaggregated data are useful to bring out the variations among
regions and population groups
• Definitions and tools for data collection need to be better harmonised
to promote comparability
• Strengthening of National Statistical Systems in most low and middle
income countries is strongly recommended:
– Political recognition
– Adequate funding
– Training and capacity development
 Points to ponder

• What does an index measure?

• What are the dimensions and indicators of HDI?
• How strong are your national statistics ? Do they
produce reliable and continuous data for
different HD indicators?
• In your country, do you have any sub-national
HDI? What type of data are needed to calculate
sub-national HDI?
• Why do we need the HDI?
Thank you!