Development - Theme 4

Measures of economic development

Human Development Index (HDI):

• 3 indicators - health (life expectancy at birth), education (mean years of schooling for adults aged 25 and over and expected years of schooling that current 5 year olds expected to recieve) and income (measured by real gross national income poer capita at PPPs).
• Each indicator is given equal weighting and a score between 0 and 1.
• The higher the score, the greater the level of economic development.
• Limitations: in high-income countries life expectancy at birth is higher but growing proportion of the population have health problems. Years of education not necessarily correlated to quality of education. GNI takes no account of income inequalities.

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