Human development is a mechanism for enlarging human choices and this was the objective set by the first human development report published by the UNDP. Measuring the complex human development phenomenon is, however, a challenging task.
The dimensions of human development vary from the easily understood welfare indicator like consumption or income to a more complex parameter like a healthy life. The UNDP uses a composite index to comprehend the level of human development and its Human Development Index (HDI) has become a popular measure during the last 12 years.
The UNDP’s Human Development Report for 2003 places Pakistan in the category of ‘low human development’. That human development conditions in Pakistan are deplorable cannot be denied. However, some questions arise about the authenticity of data used in the analysis. Specifically, there appears to be differences in Pakistan’s official data and the data used by UNDP, for the construction of the HDI.
The variables and mechanism used in the construction of the HDI are first considered. The HDI is a composite index of three indices: a long and healthy life, as measured by life expectancy at birth; knowledge as measured by the adult literacy rate and combined primary, secondary and tertiary gross enrolment ratios, and a decent standard of living measured by GDP per capita in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP) in US dollars. The knowledge index gives a two-third weight to adult literacy and a one-third weight to combined enrolment rates. To obtain the HDI value, the arithmetic mean of the fore mentioned three indices is calculated.
According to the UNDP Human Development Report 2003, Pakistan ranks among the lowest in terms of human development in the SAARC region, with an HDI rank of 144. It is shown that although the absolute value of the human development index for Pakistan has improved from 0.440 to 0.499 between 1990 and 2001, its relative position has declined; particularly when compared to Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal table 1.
The relationship to Bangladesh is important. Its HDI appears to have jumped by five per cent in one year from 2000 to 01, despite a decline in adult literacy from 41.3 to 40.6per cent during the same period. The disaggregation of HDI reveals that this is mainly due to an increase in the combined enrolment rate by 17-percentage points. The UNDP needs to explain such a massive increase in just one year.
The reverse is true for Pakistan. Literacy is increasing with a decrease in the combined enrolment rate. Literacy increased from 43.2 to 44.0 per cent, but the combined enrolment declined from 40 to 36 per cent. Table- 2
The data reported for Pakistan by the UNDP is however not corroborated by data available in national sources. Perhaps, the UNDP needs to explain its data sources and the mechanism to reconcile the component data before estimating the HDI. Table 3 furnishes the differences in the magnitude of various components. The life expectancy exceeds by almost five years, when data from Pakistan Demographic Survey is used instead of the UNDPs data. Similarly, adult literacy and combined enrolment is higher by a margin of two and three percentage points respectively for the year 2001, when data from the Pakistan Economic Survey is used instead of the UNDP’s data.
Table-3.
The Social Policy and Development Centre (SPDC) re-constructed the HDI for Pakistan using official Pakistani data. The revisited HDI, from the official statistics of the Pakistan Economic Survey and the Pakistan Demographic Survey is displayed in Table 4.
Recalculating the HDI from national data shows a substantial increase in the value of the index for both years. This rise in the value of HDI not only improves Pakistan’s ranking from 144 to 135, but also removes it from the ‘low human development’ category to the middle category.
(The author is Research Officer at Poverty Unit, SPDC.)