Measuring Key Disparities in Human Development: Rationale for Broadening and Micro Perspective

The first Human Development Report (HDR) of United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in 1990, for the first time, laid out a vision of human development that covers key aspects of well-being of people. It was born out of dissatisfaction with conventional measure of economic development based on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and per capita income. UNDP, as an international development agency, played a pioneering role in developing human development as an alternative development paradigm and Human Development Index (HDI) as a composite measure of human well-being. It publishes every year HDR, comprising HDIs to measure achievements in human development in every nation since 1990. The HDI is now a well-known yardstick of measuring well-being of people. It succeeded in challenging the hegemony of GDP growth-centric thinking and moving towards people-centric development. Its simplicity and the transparency assured by the availability of published data have been the main drivers behind the success of HDI in the last two decades.