To start with, click here to understand aspects of a well-developed cityin a fun way: http://www.citycreator.com/build.city?city=1
You will notice that more developed countries comprise more institutions and medical centers of high quality. These facilities contribute in increasing the number of healthy, well-informed and well-off individuals.This sets the difference from less developed countries

So, what is the HDI?


Video Introduction to HDI

HDI or Human developement index measures the income, knowledge and the longetivity of the people in the country.
This was designed to give a more comprehensive definition of development, which looks beyond the GNP and the GDP of a country. This measures three factors of development which are income, knowledge and longevity.
What are exactly the three factors comprised in the HDI?
Income -This is measured by purchasing power parity (PPP)
This shows the standard of living of a country.
Knowledge - This is evaluated by adult literacy rates and the percentage of children attending school
This represents the quality of education in a country.
Longetivity -This is gauged by life expectancy in a country.
This allows us to see if the individuals of a country live a long and healthy life.

How do we calculate the HDI?

Life expectancy index
(Life Expectancy - 25) / (85-25) = Life Expectancy Index

Education index
(2/3 * ALI) + (1/3 * GEI) = Education Index

Adult Literacy Index(ALI)
adult literacy rate - 0 / 100 - 0

Gross Enrollment Index(GEI)
Gross Enrollment ratio - 0 / 100 - 0

GDP Index
log(GDP per Capita) - log(100) / log(40000) - log(100) = GDP Index

Human Development Index
HDI = 1/3 (life expectancy index) + 1/3 (education index)
+ 1/3 (GDP index)
= 1/3 (0.773) + 1/3 (0.812) + 1/3 (0.740) = 0.775

What are the origins of the HDI?
HDI was organized by the UNDP from the Human Development Reports and it was developed to shift the focus of development away from the economy and more on people's quality of life. It was launched by a Pakistani economist Mahbub Ul Haq in 1990. The HDI Values have been collected since 1990 and had an another way to measure the quality of life, other than measuring the economic health.

What are some examples of the HDI of countries from different levels of development?
These are classified by th level of development of a country. As you can see the closer the index is to one, the more it is developed.

Very high human development
Norway - 0.971
Australia - 0.970
Iceland - 0.969

High human development
Hungary - 0.879
Chile - 0.878
Poland - 0.880

Medium human development
Ukraine - 0.796
Thailand - 0.783
Iran - 0.782

Low human development
Ethiopia - 0.414
Sierra Leone - 0.365
Afghanistan - 0.352

What does the UNDP’s 2009 Human Development Index tell us?

Overall, this report suggests that despite the recent improvement in the quality of life, development among countries in different parts of the world were unbalanced. Many countries have encountered economic depressions and crises related to diseases such as the HIV and AIDS. Some countries experienced extensive changes in rankings of the HDI. For instance, Ghana mounted up two positions due to educational progress, while Cha fell down two places. The differences of educational quality and life expectancy between countries are significant . For example, 20 percent of adults in Medium HDI countries and half in Low HDI countries are still illiterate, while this is very uncommon in other parts of the world. The strongest gainers of the index were China, Iran and Nepal. Their growth was focused on education and medical care rather than on income.

What are some strengths and weaknesses of HDI?

Strengths of measuring HDI
The major strength of the HDI is that it takes into account different factors of a country, beyond just the G.D.P and the G.N.P. It is an overall measure of development withn a country. This data is be valuable because the definition of development is broader than just the G.D.P and the G.N.P. A good example is China, where the G.D.P is growing by a 8.9% rate, while its HDI remains at 0.772. Ths illustrates again, how the G.D.P is insufficient in accurately determining the quality of life in a country.
In addition, we can easily observe and compare the HDI of different countries because of its numerical result. The higher the HDI, the more the country is considered as a developed country. This will catch the attention of the media, the policy makers and the governments since it offers a multi-dimensional view on the social and economic status of a country.
By capturing information about health, education and income in a single data, policy-makers can easilty grasp the progress of development of a country. Its format facilitated the comparison between the levels of development between countries.

Weaknesses of measuring HDI
One significant flaw of the HDI is that the three variables, which are income, knowledge and G.D.P, are confounding. This means that they are inter-related with one another. For example, the higher the level of education, the more likely the country will have a higher G.D.P. This means that it is hard to tell which of the factors influenced the level of development of a country the most. Another weakness of the HDI is that it does not show the variations of data within a country. Because of this, it is difficult to compare the levels of development for each variable within a country.Moreover, the data is sometimes not helpful in getting useful feedback on how to improve an aspect of a coutnry. For example, a country may have gotten a score near to 1 for one of the factors, but this doesn't mean that it has no room for imporvement. Also, these results are relative to to other countries, which means that it is impossible to know the history of development of a particular country. The ranks are values compared to other countries so each set of data of a country is not significant on its own. Moreover, the index fails to take into account some of the key aspects of development such as gender equality and respect for human rights and freedoms. Another point to note is that of the three components, only the G.D.P is responsive to short-term policy changes. In other words, it is important to consider the development of the two other components over time. One last inconvenience of the index is that not all parts of the world have data for the measurement.
Herer is a map and a graph that indicates HDI and shows the trend of HDI in different regions:

World map indicating HDI:

KEY
Green 0.800 - 0.950 and over
Yellow 0.650 - 0.750
Orange 0.500 - 0.600
Red 0.350 - 0.450
Black under 0.350
Grey data unavailabe


















Grapsh showing
Human Development Index trends:
Black – Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development
Red – Central and Eastern Europe
Orange – Latin America and the Caribbean
Olive – East Asia
Green – Arab States
Blue – South Asia
Pink – Sub-Saharan Asia






















Bibliography

http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:UN_Human_Development_Report_2009.PNG
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vy82OaiALwI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUYqliUMpnA
http://www.citycreator.com/build.city?city=1
http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/HDR_20072008_Tech_Note_1.pdf
http://hdrstats.undp.org/en/countries/country_fact_sheets/cty_fs_LBR.html
http://www2.undprcc.lk/resource_centre/pub_pdfs/P1027.pdf

http://www.marketingcharts.com/topics/europe/un-norway-has-best-standard-of-living-*****-worst-10652/