Human Development Index

Topics Covered: Issues related to health and human development.

Human Development Index:

Context:

United Nations’ Human Development Index was released recently.

What is HDI?

Published by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), it is a statistical tool used to measure a country’s overall achievement in its social and economic dimensions. The social and economic dimensions of a country are based on the health of people, their level of education attainment and their standard of living.

What’s unique about this year’s index?

For the first time, the United Nations Development Programme introduced a new metric to reflect the impact caused by each country’s per-capita carbon emissions and its material footprint, which measures the amount of fossil fuels, metals and other resources used to make the goods and services it consumes.

This metric is called- the Planetary Pressures-adjusted HDI, or PHDI.

India’s performance:

India dropped two ranks, standing at 131 out of 189 countries.
If the Index were adjusted to assess the planetary pressures caused by each nation’s development, India would move up eight places in the ranking, according to the report.

Performance of other countries:

Norway tops the HDI. It, however, falls 15 places if the new metric (The Planetary Pressures-adjusted HDI, or PHDI) is used, leaving Ireland at the top of the table.
In fact, 50 countries would drop entirely out of the “very high human development group” category, using this new metric.
Australia falls 72 places in the ranking, while the United States and Canada would fall 45 and 40 places respectively, reflecting their disproportionate impact on natural resources.
China would drop 16 places from its current ranking of 85.

Impact of pandemic:

Although this year’s report covers 2019 only, and does not account for the impact of COVID, it projected that in 2020, global HDI would fall below for the first time in the three decades since the Index was introduced.

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