Justin Wolfers put up an interesting post on the Freakonomics blog today about the Human Development Index (HDI), a summary statistic that combines information on life expectancy, schooling outcomes and income per capita. He cites a post by Andrew Gelman, which makes the claim that the Human Development Index for the 50 U.S. states provides little information above and beyond what state income per capita tells you.
Some thoughts:
1) The HDI was first developed in 1990 as a good faith effort to move beyond income as a measure of development. The idea was to capture other aspects of society and wellness that we might think are important in making people content and happy. The fact that there is little information beyond what a simpler measure of income per capita tells you is discouraging on the one hand, as it might imply that we aren't measuring non-monetary aspects of development well. On the other hand, the finding might suggest that wealth creation brings about the other aspects of development we care about, even if these other aspects are important ends in and of themselves.
2) It is important to ask what the content of the HDI is, how it is calculated, and its utility in informing policy. On this note, I'm a bit surprised that neither Wolfers or Gelman cite a seminal paper by my mentor from Duke, Allen Kelley. Written in 1991, Kelley notes the close correspondence between national income per capita and HDI, but also goes into the sausage factory of how the HDI is constructed (its a bit arbitrary) and what the statistic may or may not be able to tell us. The subtitle of his piece, "handle with care," gives you a good sense of his skepticism. The fact that the same skepticism remains warranted nearly 20 years later is more than a bit disturbing.
3) Finally, the blog fivethirtyeight.com is fantastic: the authors use data and elegant statistics to delve deeper into various political and social issues that are often taken for granted. It was first recommended to me by Joachim Hero, and I am now linking it in the sidebar for your enjoyment.
1 comment:
I remember hearing someone at a workshop earlier this year suggesting this type of analysis for measures of health systems in different countries. That the world bank, world health organization, and other big actors are in large part comparison machines. And that we need to start studying how these organizations make their comparisons. Its an interesting area, but I think have too much on my plate for the moment.
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