Human Development: Beyond the HDI

This paper explores ways of enlarging the measurement and understanding of Human Development (HD) beyond the relatively reductionist Human Development Index. From the extensive literature on well-being, we derived eleven categories of HD. Within each category, we then identified a potential set of indicators which were measurable and reflect performance with respect to that category. In order to reduce the number of indicators representing each category, we included only one for any set highly rank order correlated with each other, as well as including indicators not correlated with any other indicator in that category. Our aim was to retain only indicators which are broadly independent of each other. We subsequently investigated the extent of correlation between the retained indicators and such generally accepted core indicators as the HDI, per capita income and under five mortality rates. We found that HDI and under five mortality performed equally well in eliminating additional indicators, while per capita income did somewhat less well. A further consolidation of indicators, possibly with the help of principal components analysis applied to each category, should help us identify typologies of countries concerning success or failure with respect to the various dimensions of HD.