The popularly known Human Development Index (HDI) is obtained through linear averaging (LA) of indices in three dimensions - health, education and standard of living. LA method assumes perfect substitutability among the indices. We question its appropriateness and propose an alternative measure,...

We impose a value judgment that a decrease in failure should be accompanied by a decrease in gap (difference or ratio) between sub-groups. In other words, the same gap at lower levels of failure is to be considered worse off. This, in line with transfer sensitivity axiom of poverty indices, is...

Using Minkowski distance function we propose a class of Human Development Index measures. Special cases of this turn out to be the popularly used linear average method as also a newly proposed displaced ideal method. Two measures of penalty are suggested. One captures the non-uniform attainment...

The conventional measure of Human Development Index (HDI) is a linear average across dimensions, HDI1. Under this, poor attainments in any dimension gets perfectly compensated for better attainments in any other dimension HDI2, which is based on Euclidean distance measuring shortfall from the...

We impose a value judgment that a decrease in failure should be accompanied by a decrease in gap (difference or ratio) between sub-groups. In other words, the same gap at lower levels of failure is to be considered worse off. This, in line with transfer sensitivity axiom of poverty indices, is...

The conventional measure of the Human Development Index (HDI) is a linear average in three dimensions, HDI1. This is indifferent to uniformity in attainment across dimensions. An alternative, HDI2, based on the shortfall from the ideal using Euclidean distance, addresses the above anomaly. These...

The popularly known Human Development Index (HDI) is obtained through linear averaging (LA) of indices in three dimensions- health, education and standard of living. This paper questions the appropriateness of LA method and proposes an alternative measure, which is the inverse of the Euclidian...