Human Development Reports - United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)

Composite indices — HDI and beyond

Pushing the frontiers of measurement has always been a cornerstone of the human development approach. But it has never been measurement for the sake of measurement. The HDI has enabled innovative thinking about progress by capturing the simple yet powerful idea that development is about much more than income. Over the years the Human Development Report has introduced new measures to evaluate progress in reducing poverty and empowering women.

• The Human Development Index (HDI) measures the average achievements in a country in three basic dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, access to knowledge and a decent standard of living. Data availability determines HDI country coverage. To enable cross-country comparisons, the HDI is, to the extent possible, calculated based on data from leading international data agencies and other credible data sources available at the time of writing. For more details see 2011 Report,  Technical notes [418 KB],  FAQs about the Human Development Index (HDI) [163 KB] and  Table 1 - Human Development Index and its components [92 KB].

• The Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI) adjusts the Human Development Index (HDI) for inequality in distribution of each dimension across the population. The IHDI accounts for inequalities in HDI dimensions by “discounting” each dimension’s average value according to its level of inequality. The IHDI equals the HDI when there is no inequality across people but is less than the HDI as inequality rises. In this sense, the IHDI is the actual level of human development (accounting for this inequality), while the HDI can be viewed as an index of “potential” human development (or the maximum level of HDI) that could be achieved if there was no inequality. The “loss” in potential human development due to inequality is given by the difference between the HDI and the IHDI and can be expressed as a percentage. For more details see 2011 Report,  Technical notes [418 KB],  FAQs about the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI) [140 KB], and  Table 3 - Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index [101 KB].

• The Gender Inequality Index (GII) reflects women’s disadvantage in three dimensions—reproductive health, empowerment and the labour market—for as many countries as data of reasonable quality allow. The index shows the loss in human development due to inequality between female and male achievements in these dimensions. It ranges from 0, which indicates that women and men fare equally, to 1, which indicates that women fare as poorly as possible in all measured dimensions. For more details see 2011 Report,  Technical notes [418 KB],  FAQs about the Gender Inequality Index (GII) [142 KB], and  Table 4 - Gender Inequality Index and related indicators [108 KB].

• The Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) identifies multiple deprivations at the individual level in health, education and standard of living. It uses micro data from household surveys, and—unlike the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index—all the indicators needed to construct the measure must come from the same survey. Each person in a given household is classified as poor or nonpoor depending on the number of deprivations his or her household experiences. These data are then aggregated into the national measure of poverty. For more details see 2011 Report,  Technical notes [418 KB],  FAQs about the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) [143 KB], and  Table 5 - Multidimensional Poverty Index [89 KB].

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2011 Report