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Measuring Hdi: The Old, The New And The Elegant, Srijit Mishra, Hippu Salk Kristle Nathan

Srijit Mishra

The Human Development Index (HDI) is calculated using normalized indicators from three dimensions- health, education, and standard of living (or income). This paper evaluates three aggregation methods of computing HDI using a set of axioms. The old measure of HDI taking a linear average of the three dimensions satisfies monotonicity, anonymity, and normalization (or MAN) axioms. The current geometric mean approach additionally satisfies the axioms of uniformity, which penalizes unbalanced or skewed development across dimensions. We propose an alternative measure, where HDI is the additive inverse of the distance from the ideal. This measure, in addition to the above-mentioned axioms, …