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Keeping things simple: why the Human Development Index should not diverge from its equal weights assumption

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Abstract

Using a range of statistical criteria rooted in Information Theory we show that there is little justification for relaxing the equal weights assumption underlying the United Nation’s Human Development Index (HDI) even if the true HDI diverges significantly from this assumption. Put differently, the additional model complexity that unequal weights add to the HDI more than counteracts the improvement in goodness-of-fit. This suggests that, in some cases, there may be limited validity in increasing the complexity of a range of other composite sustainability indices.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are working on a European Union Sixth Framework Project (System for Environmental and Agricultural Modelling: Linking European Science and Society; SEAMLESS) which helped provide inspiration for this work.

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  1. Centre for Rural Economy, School of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development, Newcastle University, NE1 7RU, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK

    Lee M. Stapleton & Guy D. Garrod

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  1. Lee M. Stapleton
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  2. Guy D. Garrod
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Correspondence to Lee M. Stapleton.

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Stapleton, L.M., Garrod, G.D. Keeping things simple: why the Human Development Index should not diverge from its equal weights assumption. Soc Indic Res 84, 179–188 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-006-9081-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-006-9081-3

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