A generalized human development index

Abstract

The human development index indicates achievement in the living standard of a population in terms of attainment levels of different quality-of-life attributes, such as educational attainment and life expectancy at birth. This paper axiomatically characterizes a general measure of achievement. This achievement index, which contains the UNDP human development index as a special case, can be regarded as a generalized human development index. The general index allows calculation of the percentage contributions of individual attributes to overall achievement and hence to identify the attributes that are more/less susceptible to achievement. This kind of breakdown becomes important from a policy point of view. The paper provides an empirical illustration of the axiomatically characterized indices.