Human Development Index—Revisited: Integration of Human Values

Abstract

In the present article, the concept of Human Development Index (HDI) has been revisited so as to integrate the human values using the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) measured by Transparency International, for different countries, as a simple generalization within the framework of existing Anand and Sen’s (1994) and Haq’s (1990) prescription. In this framework, a geometrical average of three indices corresponding to three dimensions, namely, the life expectancy, years of schooling and standard of living (gross national income per capita), was taken. In order to have HDI in broader perspective, one has to integrate another important dimension known as human values. The main hypotheses of this article are: (a) human values play an important role in human development; (b) CPI has a strong correlation with HDI; and (c) CPI is intimately linked with the outcome of human values. The important finding of this article is the successful establishment of these hypotheses which brought appreciable changes in the HDI when human values are integrated with it. As a result, most of the countries showed a vast decline in HDI (up to 30 per cent), affecting the respective ranking of different countries. Such a value-based HDI (VHDI) is supposed to motivate even the richer countries to improve their HDI ranking in future.