More on Human Development Index

Some more random thoughts in continuation to the previous post.

Here are two charts that plot the UN Human Development Index values against the per capita GDP of the respective countries.

The first chart represents almost the entire universe (data not available for some countries). As expected, HDI sharply rises as per capita GDP rises and then levels off. India ((HDI Rank: 119, Index: 0.519, per capita GDP US $1,017) has to go a long way even to catch up with medium developed countries. If we take the inflexion point of the graph, which seems to occur at the $10,000 mark, we need to be at least $10 trillion in GDP, before our HDI can start to look respectable. This is a sobering thought. There is no way to really bypass this reality. 

The second chart represents some countries close to India’s per capita GDP. Even within our limited scope, how are we doing? The trendline can be thought of a measure of how efficiently you are spending your GDP to achieve Human Development. If you are above the trendline, you are doing better than your cohorts. If you are below, your policies are sub-optimal. The best performer in this range is Uzbekistan, the worst – Sudan (data will change from next year, one presumes). India is certainly doing better than some of its cohorts, but our policies are not really generating extra Human Development outside of trend. This can be a measure of policy effectiveness.