Limitations
and Drawbacks of Human Development Index?
Though the HDI has broadened the
discussion surrounding the evaluation of development and is an important
alternative to the traditional uni-dimensional measure of development (GDP), it
has come under severe criticism on several occasions. The HDI index has various
limitations and drawbacks, for example, it fails to include ecological
considerations among others. It seems to have become stagnant, repeating the
same measure without necessarily increasing the HDI's utility. The HDRs have
lost touch with their original vision and the index fails to capture the
essence of the world it seeks to portray. In addition, the index focuses almost
exclusively on national performance and ranking and does not pay much attention
to development from a global perspective
While the methodology is consistent for all countries in each year, there are notable differences between years that make temporal comparisons of progress difficult. Change in ranks can easily be accounted for due to methodological or data rather than genuine progress in human development. While HDRs often carry warnings about the inadvisability of such year-on-year comparisons, it is argued that the existence of such a high-profile index and overt presentation within league tables do encourage such comparisons. It would be more meaningful if robust categories of human development (low, medium, high) rather than league tables are considered . Others have found it very complicated to summarize and analyze.
To overcome these limitations, modifications to HDI have been devised to suit individual situations more appropriately viz. Literate Life Expectancy (LLE) indicator was developed by Lutz in 1995 as an indicator of social development and quality of life. Many Indian authors have also attempted a few variations and/or additions to the existing human development indices. Ministry of Women and Child Development and UNDP (2009), Antony (2007), and Indrayan (1999) computed these for individual states and correlated with various demographic, socioeconomic, health and nutritional indicators. Corrie in 1995 developed the HDI for a Dalit child in India so that it could serve as an indicator of the "social progress" achieved in India as the country attempts to fulfil its constitutional vision of equality for all citizens.
There were some inherent limitations in GDI and GEM as well. The GDI was not a measure of gender inequality; it was the HDI adjusted for gender disparities in its basic components and could not be interpreted independently of the HDI. The GII was introduced as a replacement of these two indices and brings in methodological improvements and alternative indicators. However, like the GDI, one cannot determine which of the sexes is better off by looking at the value. It will be revised and improved in light of feedback and data availability.
MPI has replaced HPI as HPI could not identify specific individuals, households or larger groups of people as jointly deprived. However, the MPI has some drawbacks mainly due to data constraints because flow data are not available for all dimensions, the health data are relatively weak and overlook some groups' deprivations. Also, the surveys, whose findings are used for calculating MPI, are taken in different years, and some countries do not have recent data. Therefore, the difference in dates limits direct cross-country comparisons, as circumstances may have improved or deteriorated in the intervening years.
The IHDI was introduced in HDR 2010 to overcome the limitation of HDI of being an average which conceals disparities in human development across the population within the same country. Two countries with different distributions of achievements can have the same average HDI value. The IHDI takes into account not only the average achievements of a country on health, education and income, but also how those achievements are distributed among its citizens by "discounting" each dimension's average value according to its level of inequality. The IHDI will be equal to the HDI when there is no inequality in the distribution of achievement across people in society, but falls below the HDI as inequality rises.
However, it is not association sensitive, i.e., it does not account for overlapping inequalities - whether the same people experience multiple deprivations. Also, the individual values of indicators such as income can be zero or even negative they have been adjusted to non-negative non-zero values uniformly across countries.
While the methodology is consistent for all countries in each year, there are notable differences between years that make temporal comparisons of progress difficult. Change in ranks can easily be accounted for due to methodological or data rather than genuine progress in human development. While HDRs often carry warnings about the inadvisability of such year-on-year comparisons, it is argued that the existence of such a high-profile index and overt presentation within league tables do encourage such comparisons. It would be more meaningful if robust categories of human development (low, medium, high) rather than league tables are considered . Others have found it very complicated to summarize and analyze.
To overcome these limitations, modifications to HDI have been devised to suit individual situations more appropriately viz. Literate Life Expectancy (LLE) indicator was developed by Lutz in 1995 as an indicator of social development and quality of life. Many Indian authors have also attempted a few variations and/or additions to the existing human development indices. Ministry of Women and Child Development and UNDP (2009), Antony (2007), and Indrayan (1999) computed these for individual states and correlated with various demographic, socioeconomic, health and nutritional indicators. Corrie in 1995 developed the HDI for a Dalit child in India so that it could serve as an indicator of the "social progress" achieved in India as the country attempts to fulfil its constitutional vision of equality for all citizens.
There were some inherent limitations in GDI and GEM as well. The GDI was not a measure of gender inequality; it was the HDI adjusted for gender disparities in its basic components and could not be interpreted independently of the HDI. The GII was introduced as a replacement of these two indices and brings in methodological improvements and alternative indicators. However, like the GDI, one cannot determine which of the sexes is better off by looking at the value. It will be revised and improved in light of feedback and data availability.
MPI has replaced HPI as HPI could not identify specific individuals, households or larger groups of people as jointly deprived. However, the MPI has some drawbacks mainly due to data constraints because flow data are not available for all dimensions, the health data are relatively weak and overlook some groups' deprivations. Also, the surveys, whose findings are used for calculating MPI, are taken in different years, and some countries do not have recent data. Therefore, the difference in dates limits direct cross-country comparisons, as circumstances may have improved or deteriorated in the intervening years.
The IHDI was introduced in HDR 2010 to overcome the limitation of HDI of being an average which conceals disparities in human development across the population within the same country. Two countries with different distributions of achievements can have the same average HDI value. The IHDI takes into account not only the average achievements of a country on health, education and income, but also how those achievements are distributed among its citizens by "discounting" each dimension's average value according to its level of inequality. The IHDI will be equal to the HDI when there is no inequality in the distribution of achievement across people in society, but falls below the HDI as inequality rises.
However, it is not association sensitive, i.e., it does not account for overlapping inequalities - whether the same people experience multiple deprivations. Also, the individual values of indicators such as income can be zero or even negative they have been adjusted to non-negative non-zero values uniformly across countries.
Rahi M. Human
development report 2010: Changes in parameters and perspectives. Indian J
Public Health [serial online] 2011 [cited 2018 Feb 8];55:272-5. Available
from: http://www.ijph.in/text.asp?2011/55/4/272/92404
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