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Robust human development rankings

Author

Listed:
  • Laurens Cherchye

  • Erwin Oghe

  • Tom Van Puyenbroeck

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Laurens Cherchye & Erwin Oghe & Tom Van Puyenbroeck, 2005. "Robust human development rankings," Public Economics Working Paper Series ces0516, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Centrum voor Economische Studiën, Working Group Public Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:wpe:papers:ces0516
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    JEL classification:

    • C61 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - 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, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being
    • O10 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - General

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