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Mahbub Ul Haq "Human Development Is The Expansion of People's Freedoms To Live Long

The document discusses the concept of human development and metrics used to measure it, including the Human Development Index (HDI). The HDI measures average achievements in health, education, and income to provide a comprehensive picture of human development. Related indices include the Gender Development Index (GDI) and Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM), which account for gender inequality, as well as the Human Poverty Index (HPI) for measuring multi-dimensional poverty. These indices have impacted policymaking by shifting focus from purely economic measures to broader human well-being concerns. Resources are increasingly allocated based on gaps in human development between regions.

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44 views5 pages

Mahbub Ul Haq "Human Development Is The Expansion of People's Freedoms To Live Long

The document discusses the concept of human development and metrics used to measure it, including the Human Development Index (HDI). The HDI measures average achievements in health, education, and income to provide a comprehensive picture of human development. Related indices include the Gender Development Index (GDI) and Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM), which account for gender inequality, as well as the Human Poverty Index (HPI) for measuring multi-dimensional poverty. These indices have impacted policymaking by shifting focus from purely economic measures to broader human well-being concerns. Resources are increasingly allocated based on gaps in human development between regions.

Uploaded by

Saief Ahmed
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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GEN 214

Human Development Approach:

The objective of development is to create an enabling environment for


people to enjoy long, healthy and creative lives.”

- Mahbub ul Haq

"Human development is the expansion of people’s freedoms to live long,


healthy and creative lives; to advance other goals they have reason to
value; and to engage actively in shaping development equitably and
sustainably on a shared planet. People are both the beneficiaries and
drivers of human development, as individuals and in groups”

Measurement of Human Development

Statistical motivation: The human development accounting by providing a set of


comprehensive data that can present a total picture of human development in any society.
The focus of HDI is to measure average achievements in human development in a
society. It builds on three basic dimensions of human life- a long and healthy life,
knowledge and decent standard of living. The HDI measures basic capabilities in these
dimensions.

Political motivation: Ranking 174 countries on the HDI scales serves one important
political purpose. Every country in the world has a favorite country to compare- for
Norway, it does not matter where the rest of the world is, but where Sweden is. An Indian
does not care much for what happens in Latin America but what happens in Pakistan.

Simplicity: The HDI is simple. It is easily interpreted and its basic message must be
easily communicable to planners and policy makers.

Universality: The index must have universal relevance. It should have applications both
in developed and as well as developing country. All the dimensions included the HDI
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have universal applications. For example, a long and healthy life is valued both in rich
and poor countries.

By- products of HDI


GDI and GEM
Gender Related Development and Gender Empowerment Measure: A Gender – related
development index ( GDI) and Gender Empowerment Measure ( GEM) emerged in 1995
to take into account gender inequality in achievement of basic capabilities (GDI) and
gender inequality in opportunities in economic and political areas (GEM).

Gender Development Index: The GDI measures achievements in the same dimensions
and the variables as the HDI does, but takes into account inequality in achievements
between women and men. The greater the gender disparity in human development, the
lower is a country’s GDI compared to its HDI. The GDI is simply the HDI, or adjusted
downwards, for gender inequality.
Gender Empowerment Measure:
This is a measure of women’s achievements in the economic and political spheres. There
are three elements:
1. Political Participation and decision making – measured using share of parliamentary
seats held by men and women.
2. Economic Participation and decision making: - measured by using two indicators:
women’s and men’s share of positions as legislature, senior official and management, and
shares of professional and technical positions.
3. Power over economic resources- measured using estimated income figures for men
and women. It thus differs from the GDI, an indicator of gender inequality in basic
capabilities.

Human Poverty Index (HPI)


In 1997, a composite measure for multi-dimensional poverty – the Human Poverty Index
(HPI) – was introduced. The idea was first, to look at human development from a
derivational aspect and second, to assess how the benefits of human development – as
GEN 214

measured by the average achievements represented by the HDI – are distributed. IT


basically measures shortfalls in average achievements, but it cannot reflect the above two
issues. The HPI was constructed both for developing countries (HPI-1) in 1997 and for
industrial countries (HPI-2) in 1998.

Gross National Happiness

Gross National Happiness (GNH) is frequently mentioned as an alternative measure of


progress. It was originally suggested by the King of Bhutan in the early 1980s as a more
appropriate measure for his small kingdom than GDP. It was not an actual index, but a
principle for guiding Bhutanese development in a fashion consistent with the country’s
culture and spiritual values rather than by focusing on increasing economic activity.

Happy Planet Index


The purpose of the Happy Planet Index (HPI), developed and published by the New
Economics Foundation (NEF), is to measure a country’s ecological efficiency in
delivering human well-being. The index is a composite of three measures: life expectancy
at birth, life satisfaction, and ecological footprint.

What have been their impacts?


Thus macroeconomic policies of various developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin
America started to explicitly take various issues of human development into
consideration. Policy makers in these countries have moved away from growth-centric
perspective of development and gave begun to concentrate on broader dimensions of
human well-being. In many parts of the world, new and emerging development concerns
have started to dominate the development dialogue. Thus in countries like Botswana and
South Africa, the implications of HIV/AIDS for development became a serious issue. In
March 2001 the President of Botswana made a decision to provide free access to ARV
drugs for the 17% of the country’s population with HIV/AIDS. The erosion of basic
social services in Eastern Europe and the CIS has been domination the policy dialogues
in that region. And the human impact of the East Asian crisis drew the attention of policy
makers in the 1990s.
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The focus of development on basis human concerns has also changed the ways resources
are allocated. In Egypt, with the publication of its first NHDR, when Upper Egypt was
found to be lagging behind the Cairo region in every areas of human development, it led
to a serious policy discussion between the Governors of 17 provinces in the country on
the issue of resource allocation and it changed the entire resource allocation pattern, with
more funds now going to Upper Egypt.

It has led to asking questions and identifying reasons for shortfalls in human
development. In the Philippines with the publication of its 1997 NHDRs, the issue of
allocation a threshold amount for basic social services at the level of local governments
was identified as a crucial factor for development. So there was a presidential directive
requiring all local governments to devote at least 20% of domestic revenue to human
development priorities.

At the global level, issues are now being explored as to whether bilateral aid can be
allocated on the basis of HDI, or the core funds of multilateral agencies can be based on
the index and so on.

In many countries, with the HDI at the centre stage, new institutions have evolved to
move forward the agenda for human development. In Bolivia, a new ministry for human
development was established to give proper priority to human development.
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