Measuring the Human Development or Deprivation : A Review of (Different Composite Index) Methods

The present paper reviews the different methods in practice to measure the human development or deprivation, which, in fact, is an emerging part of the development discourse. Specifically it deals with the problems of comparability, aggregation and weighing the dimension/indicators in composite index. The essential part of reporting human development involves a normalization of selected indicators by setting the goal posts of minimum and maximum values of the selected indicator that facilitates the construction of a composite index. The evaluation at the aggregate level (at the national or state level) always conceals the geographical spread across sub-regions, and therefore ignores regional disparities. Another task in constructing a composite index is weighing each individual indicator while summarising them into a composite index.