Purpose – The human development index (HDI) and gender‐related development index (GDI) have become accepted as leading measures for ranking human well being in different countries. The purpose of this paper is to identify the planning policies that improve these indices and to also suggest...

Purpose – The human development index (HDI) and gender-related development index (GDI) have become accepted as leading measures for ranking human well being in different countries. The purpose of this paper is to identify the planning policies that improve these indices and to also suggest...

The Human Development Index (HDI) is widely used as an aggregate measure of overall human well being. We examine the allocations implied by the maximization of this index, using a standard growth model — an extended version of Mankiw, Romer, andWeil’s (1992) model — and compare these with...

In the Human Development Index (HDI), life expectancy is the only indicator used in modeling the dimension ‘a long and healthy life’. Whereas life expectancy is a direct measure of quantity of life, it is only an indirect measure of healthy years lived. In this paper we attempt to remedy...

We consider a weighting scheme that yields the best-case scenario measurement of the Human Development Index (HDI) using an approach that relies on consistent tests for stochastic dominance efficiency (SDE). We compare a given hybrid composite index such as the official equally-weighted HDI to...