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...

The conventional measure of the Human Development Index (HDI) is a linear average in three dimensions, HDI<SUB align="right"><SMALL>1</SMALL></SUB>. This is indifferent to uniformity in attainment across dimensions. An alternative, HDI<SUB align="right"><SMALL>2</SMALL></SUB>, based on the shortfall from the ideal using Euclidean distance, addresses the above anomaly. These...</small></sub></small></sub>

Gender Development Index and Gender Empowerment Measure are two gender-based indicators provided by the United Nations Development Program. Population share of the genders enter the formulation of these indicators in such a way that it favours the better performing gender. This can lead to...

There is a growing consensus that universalisation of modern energy services is central to reducing major elements of poverty and hunger, increasing literacy and education, and improving health care, employment opportunities, and lives of women and children. In India, more than 700 million...

This note provides an estimate of incidence of poor and poverty risk in India across NSS regions for 2004-05 and 2009-10 in rural and urban areas. It raises concern on increasing poverty risk and also incidence of poor in some regions. These are not necessarily among the relatively worse-off...

If priors are deterministic (zero or unity) and conditional evidence is uncertain (lies between zero and one) then Bayesian updating will lead to posteriors that are the same as priors. This in a sense explains the persistence of fundamentalist belief. Under such a belief system, only if...

The Human Development Index (HDI) is calculated using normalized indicators from three dimensions- health, education, and standard of living (or income). This paper evaluates three aggregation methods of computing HDI using a set of axioms. The old measure of HDI taking a linear average of the...