What does the Human Developement Index mean to you?

Question

I am writing a research paper, and need to get peoples opinions regarding the HDI. Please explain your thoughts. Thanks very much!

Answer 1

Hi,

You can find your answer in the last paragraph. The following paragraphs are for people, interested in knowing what is HDI.

Human Development Index (HDI) is a measure of development of a nation. The data required to calculate the HDI is reported by most of the member nations of the UN, with the exceptions of China and few other countries, and the report of Human Development bsed on HDI is published every year by UNDP
http://hdr.undp.org/

HDI is based on the following national averages.
1.Life expectancy at the time of birth (based Infant Mortality Rate)
2. Adult Literacy Rate and School/Education Enrollment Rate
3. Gross Domestic product (GDP) at Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), measured in USD

The formula for HDI, based on the above can be got from page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_development_index
and the definition of components of HDI can be got from the links on the same page.

The HDI value ranges from 0.000 to 1.000, with the following sub ranges

(0.300 - 0.499) - Low
(0.500 - 0.799) - Medium
(0.800 - 1.000) - High
(0.000 - 0.299) - N/a

Examples as per 2004 Report
Low - Sierra Leone, Niger (African Continent)
Medium - India, Bolivia
High - USA, Norway, Japan

I think this is not the forum to get individual opinions. You have to try elsewhere, which depends on what cross section of people you want to get opinions from.

I think 95% of the lay people would have never heard of HDI. So if your test population contains universal set in a given town/city, You can safely report 95% ignorance. If you frame your question in a different way, such as Rate the following important indicators of Human Development, probably you may end up with good set of answers.

Good Luck

Answer 2

I would think it would explain the different stages of life. As in what the average age a baby says it's first word, crawls, walks, etc. Then adolescents stages, 20's, 30,'s and on up through the decades of life.There's different stages in our brain, muscle, fat, etc, and seems to make changes as we reach a new decade in life.