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Robust human development rankings

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Author Info
Laurens Cherchye ()
Erwin Oghe ()
Tom Van Puyenbroeck ()

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Abstract

The United Nations' Human Development Index (HDI) takes several dimensions ---income, school enrolment and literacy rate, longevity--- and combines them into a single figure that measures the degree of development of a given country. However, there is disagreement about (i) how to normalize the scores for the different criteria to make them comparable and (ii) how to aggregate the (normalized) scores over the different criteria. At the risk of stressing the obvious, changes in normalization and/or aggregation will affect the country rankings. First, we focus on robust rankings, i.e., rankings which hold for a wide set of normalization and/or aggregation procedures. Second, we show that all proposed ranking procedures can be implemented via linear programming techniques. Third, we illustrate how our methodology can prove useful in assessing the robustness of the human development country ranking/classification (produced annually by the United Nations) in a descriptive and statistical way.

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File URL: http://www.econ.kuleuven.ac.be/ew/academic/econover/Papers/DPS0516.pdf
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Publisher Info
Paper provided by Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Centrum voor Economische Studiën, Working Group Public Economics in its series Public Economics Working Paper Series with number ces0516.

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Length: 39 pp.
Date of creation: 2005
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:wpe:papers:ces0516

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Related research
Keywords: Human Development Index; Lorenz Dominance; Linear programming; Robustness Analysis;

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
C61 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods and Programming - - - Optimization Techniques; Programming Models; Dynamic Analysis
D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare and Poverty - - - General Welfare
O10 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - General

References listed on IDEAS
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  1. Fleurbaey, Marc & Hagnere, Cyrille & Trannoy, Alain, 2003. "Welfare comparisons with bounded equivalence scales," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 110(2), pages 309-336, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  2. Luchters, Guido & Menkhoff, Lukas, 2000. "Chaotic Signals from HDI Measurement," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor and Francis Journals, vol. 7(4), pages 267-70, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  3. Dowrick, Steve & Dunlop, Yvonne & Quiggin, John, 2003. "Social indicators and comparisons of living standards," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(2), pages 501-529, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Krishna Mazumdar, 2003. "A New Approach to Human Development Index," Review of Social Economy, Taylor and Francis Journals, vol. 61(4), pages 535-549, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  5. Bardhan, Kalpana & Klasen, Stephan, 1999. "UNDP's Gender-Related Indices: A Critical Review," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 27(6), pages 985-1010, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. Laurens Cherchye & Wim Moesen & Tom Van Puyenbroeck, 2003. "Legitimately Diverse, yet Comparable: On Synthesising Social Inclusion Performance in the EU," Public Economics Working Paper Series ces0301, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Centrum voor Economische Studiën, Working Group Public Economics. [Downloadable!]
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  7. Maasoumi, Esfandiar & Nickelsburg, Gerald, 1988. "Multivariate Measures of Well-Being and an Analysis of Inequality in the Michigan Data," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 6(3), pages 326-34, July.
  8. Satya R. Chakravarty, 2003. "A Generalized Human Development Index," Review of Development Economics, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 7(1), pages 99-114, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  9. Sagar, Ambuj D. & Najam, Adil, 1998. "The human development index: a critical review," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 249-264, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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This page was last updated on 2009-11-27.

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