Human Development Report
Human Development Reports
Origins
The United Nations Development Program commissioned the first Human Development Report (HDR) in 1990 under the leadership of Pakistani economist Mahbub ul Haq.[1] Its explicit purpose was to ‘shift the focus of development economics from national income accounting to people centered policies.”[2] The project marked a shift in economic policy thought away from concerns solely about economic growth to that of a more balanced approach with human beings as the ultimate ends. The philosophical framework for the reports is largely taken from the work of Amartya Sen and his ‘Capabilities Approach.’ In fact, Sen worked directly with the UNDP and ul Haq to provide intellectual support and oversight for the project. Consequently, in the following examination of the Human Development Report, Sen’s approach becomes not only more influential in philosophical spheres, but in the making of real public policy.
Implementation of the ‘Capabilities Approach’ is seminal because it marks a paradigm shift away other schools that have influenced public policy debates—two namely being neoliberalism and ‘capabilities’ predecessor, the basic needs approach.[3] All of the approaches are concerned with human well-being. So why has the ‘Capabilities Approach’ viably emerged in such a short time?
The basic needs approach, from the work of John Rawls, did much to curb the monoconcentration of utilitarianism. By bringing many more concerns into the moral fold such as his insistence on fairness and the priority of liberty, Rawls enlivened the discussion of economic moral philosophy. However, the basic needs tradition lacks “a strong and explicit philosophical foundation” and therefore has been left open and translated “into policy that focused mainly on meeting people’s material needs.”[4] That is, it emphasizes a minimum consumption level of only the most basic needs: food, water, shelter, clothing, and healthcare. It would not invest in forward-looking economically-productive projects that would help a society better sustain itself in the future. As a result, in economic policy making, ‘basic needs’ has since been surpassed by the ‘Capabilities Approach.’
Neoliberalism understands the concept of human well-being differently; it equates well-being with utility and thus is intimately connected to the moral philosophy of utilitarianism. In “A Decade of Human Development,” Sen writes that to understand the innovation of the HDR, “it is useful to consider…the hold of utilitarian philosophy over rivals as the dominant form of ethical reasoning, especially in the Anglo-American intellectual tradition.”[5] Utilitarianism concentrates on one variable—utility. Sen admits that utility incorporates many important aspects of human well being. Happiness is certainly an important factor as is avoiding pain and suffering. There are other significant aspects of human life that utility fails to measure. So then why not include them, in addition to utility, to achieve a more complete measurement? Sen contends that much of utilitarianism’s dominance is owed to the “trumped-up belief that it would be somehow analytically mistaken, or at least ferociously clumsy, to have many different things as being simultaneously valuable.”[6] John Stuart Mill, author of Utilitarianism, worried about the feasibility of a pluralist conception.[7] Utilitarianism had the upper hand in that it had the ability to incorporate any concern into a single measure. Ultimately, proponents of other aspects to human life were forced to surrender by fitting their concerns into their respective effects on overall utility. The problem requiring fixing as Sen saw it was that rights, freedoms, and the human capabilities are not well accounted for in the utility calculus. Purposely then, “Capabilities’” return to a pluralist conception has reversed a fundamental question: Where as utilitarianism asks “in terms of what one variable should we sensibly judge alternative possibilities?”—the pluralist approach answers that of “how should we value these alternatives?”[8]
Formulating the HDI
What evolved from utilitarianism in the world of economic evaluation is an emphasis on real income. Aggregating ‘utility’ with measurable data is a nearly impossible task. So while the foundational underpinning remained utility, real income became the practical substitute used in economic evaluation. Consequently, income statistics such as Gross National Product or even a distribution-adjusted version of GNP took hold as the dominant evaluation measurements. Pluralist rivals would be deemed too messy and impractical. Much of the success of the HDR is due to its accomplishment of that messy task—devising a pluralist calculus.
“Rather than concentrating only on some solitary and traditional measure of economic progress (such as the gross national product per head), ‘human development’ accounting involves a systematic examination of a wealth of information about how human beings in each society live (including their level of education and health care, among other variables). It brings an inescapably pluralist conception of progress to the exercise of development evaluation.”(Sen 2000).
Establishing measurement tools for evaluating human capabilities was critical to the success of the HDR in attracting the attention of policy-makers. Haq believed that for the HDR to take hold, a simple, single measurement was necessary to compete with economic indicators. The Human Development Index (HDI) is just that—a composite index of all the features prominent in the ‘Capabilities Approach.’[9] Sen was initially opposed to the idea of a single indicative figure. He was concerned by the problematic nature involved in capturing the full complexity of human capabilities. However, Haq’s belief that only such a number could have significant influence eventually convinced Sen to attempt the difficult task.[10]
One of the most difficult aspects of this task is choosing which capabilities are most important and then determining their relative weights. Two criteria were used in making these decisions: 1) they must be universally valued; 2) they must be basic enough so that their absence would bar other capabilities. More fundamentally, the approach is deliberately open-ended with respect to these choices. This flexibility allows for the criteria to change over time and place. It also allows for continued discussion and debate. This was one of Mahbub’s largest concerns. He stated “Here we have a broad framework; if you want something to be included in this list, which may deserve a table in the Human Development Report, tell us what, and explain why it must figure in this accounting. We will listen”(Sen 2000).
The first HDR focused on three elements of human life longevity, knowledge, and decent living standards.[11] The corresponding indicators are life expectancy at birth, literacy rate, and a measure of purchasing power. The report acknowledges some of its shortcomings:
“All three measures suffer from a common failing: they are averages that conceal wide disparities in the overall population. Different social groups have different life expectancies. There often are wide disparities in male and female literacy and income is always distributed unevenly” (Human Development Report 1990).
Evolution and Implications
Practicality was a priority and the report stresses that these indicators are not set in stone. At times however, the capabilities approach has been misinterpreted as narrowly limited to those three particular measures. On the one hand, this reductive advance has somewhat undermined the philosophy behind the capabilities approach. Since the first issue seventeen years ago however, other capabilities have garnered more attention, especially those tied to social and political freedoms.
These changes over time illustrate the flexible framework of the HDR. In addition to the HDI, the HDR now includes many disaggregated indexes. An index of equity was the first of these to be published in 1993. Industrialized nations have a more complete set of data. It was decided then to separately rank these advanced nations in terms of inequality. Another such expansion is concerned with gender equity. The 1995 report included a Gender Development Index (GDI). Similarly, this index is particularly applicable to developed nations. Gender equality is intrinsically valuable, but would be left out of aggregate income measures. Thus, more focused indices such as these point out faults which might otherwise go unrecognized.
The choice to create these single number indices (despite their shortcomings) was a good one. It necessitates an ordered ranking. In fact, the indices are not absolute, but determined relative to other nations. This provokes competition and corresponding action. Because of the disaggregated indices, the competition is not limited to the primary HDI (which may be marginal among advanced nations), but can spot short comings in a wide array of areas. In conjunction with the widespread attention the HDRs have received since its inception, the indexes have led directly to policy initiatives. The following are just a few examples[12]:
- Cambodia’s 1998 Report drew national media, government, and public attention to persistent discrimination against women in access to education and health care.
- Brazil decided to use the HDI to allocate US$6.5 billion to combat human poverty at the municipal level, benefiting 53 million people.
- Japan and South Korea adopted the HDR’s Gender Empowerment Measure in the formulation of national legislation.
- The Philippines 1999 Report on education spurred major debates on the educational policy reform in the country’s Senate and Executive Cabinet, and the 1997 report led to a presidential directive requiring all local governments to devote at least 20 per cent of internal revenue to human development priorities.
[1] “Human Development Reports: Measuring Development and Influencing Policy.” United Nations Development Programme. December 2001.
[2] Fukuda-Parr, Sakiko. "The Human Development Paradigm: Operationalizing Sen's Ideas on Capabilities." Feminis Economics, (2003): 301-17.
[3] Fukuda-Parr 304
[4] Fukuda-Parr 304
[5] Sen, Amartya. "A Decade of Human Development." Journal of Human Development, no. 1 (2000): 17-23.
[6] Sen 19
[7] Sen 20
[8] Sen 20
[9] For a more complete description of how the HDI is calculated see Human development Index: Methodology and Measurement Sudhir Anand and Amartya K. Sen, 1994
[10] Fukuda-Parr 305
[11] Taken from the first HDR Human Development Report. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
[12] The following are taken from “Human Development Reports: Measuring Development and Influencing Policy.” United Nations Development Programme. December 2001.
