Original Research Article
Year: 2017 | Month: September | Volume: 7 | Issue: 9 | Pages: 207-220
Health Adjusted Human Development Index: A Modified Measure of Human Development
Ravi Prakash Jha1, Krittika Bhattacharyya,2, Devendra Mishra2, Dr. Sarang Pradipkumar Pedgaonkar3
1Division of Biostatistics, Department of community Medicine, Institute of Medical Sciences, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi.
2International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai.
3Department of Population Policies & Programmes, International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai.
Corresponding Author: Ravi Prakash Jha
ABSTRACT
Introduction: Presently we are living in a world where out of every seven persons one person is disabled (WHO Disability Report). Though most of the developed countries have already achieved high level of life expectancies, incorporation of life expectancy as a major component in the construction of Human Development Index (HDI) together with the other two components (Education and Income) may not capture the actual developmental status of a country as people may continue to live longer, but whether higher value of life expectancy ensures a full healthy life in different segments of a population is of serious concern. The quality of healthcare facilities and its accessibility should therefore be the integral part of development and HDI should be adjusted accordingly. It is also necessary to validate the existing 4-group classification (Very High, High, Medium and Low HDI groups) on the basis of which 181 countries are classified. Through this paper we would like to acknowledge the need of using Healthy Life Expectancy at Birth (HALE) together with a newer 5-group classification that could minimize the misclassification errors to an acceptable level.
Objectives: 1) To find the modified HDI that is adjusted for morbidity.
2) To Rank 181 countries on the basis of new modified HDI and to compare the rankings by these two methods.
3) To introduce a newer 5-group classification and to validate that classification against the existing 4-group classification for 181 countries in 2015-2016.
Data Sources: Human Development Report 2016 and Global Health Observatory (GHO) data.
Methodology: Formula for modifying HDI is derived with proper choice of weights. The New 5-group classification is validated against the existing 4-group classification through Discriminant Analysis. Ranks of countries according to the newly constructed Health adjusted HDI are compared with that of the original set of HDI ranks. Differences in the value and rank of both adjusted and unadjusted HDIs are calculated and interpreted accordingly.
Results: Our modification and the new 5-group classification are found to yield lesser misclassification errors than the existing HDI with 4-group classification. The new modification is named as Health Adjusted Human Development Index (HAHDI)
Conclusion: The inclusion of HALE in HDI together with the suggested classification would produce a substantially improved results over the existing HDI with 4-group classification in terms of capturing the true developmental status of these 181 countries in 2015-2016.
Key words: Human Development Index, Healthy Life Expectancy, Human Development Report (2016), Discriminant Analysis, Health Adjusted Human Development Index.