IGCSE Development Studies: Specimen Questions with Answers 61 - 63 of 98

Explanation

According to the UNDP, “Human development is defined as a process of enlarging people choice.” It is claimed as standard means of measuring human development. The fundamental use of HDI is to measure the development of a country.

Explanation

The UNDP issues the annual Human Development report based on the three basic criteria which is used to rank the countries. The three indicators of HDI are:

• Life expectancy at birth, as an index of population health and longevity.
• Knowledge and education, as measured by the adult literacy rate (with two-thirds weighting) and the combined primary, secondary and tertiary gross enrolment ratio with one-third weighting.
• Standard of living as measured by the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita at purchasing power parity (PPP) in United States Dollar.

Explanation

The HDI examines three important criteria of economic development- Life expectancy, education level and income level. The importance of Human Development Index is-

• The HDI gives an overall index of economic development
• It does give a rough ability to make comparisons on issues of economic welfare- much more than just using GDP statistics show.
• It gives idea regarding areas of development which requires improvement.
• Statistics gives better decision-making areas having wide disparity.
• More focus on social & human development rather than only capital accumulation and growth.