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The Human Development Index
The Human Development Index measures a country's average achievements in three basic dimensions of human development. The three different categories of human development being measured for the HDI are: health, knowledge/education and the standard of living. The development of health is measured using the life expectancy at birth. The knowledge element of the HDI is a little more complex to measure. It takes into account the adult literacy rate, along withe the total combined tertiary gross enrollment ratio. Then the standard of living is essentially calculated by GDP per capita.
When I started looking at the world map of Human Development Indices, it surprised me at how the development of countries is so diverse in Africa and Asia, but in North America, South America, Europe and Australia the development of these areas is towards the upper end. It makes me wonder why the African countries are so different and low in stages of development and why most of the South-Asian countries are also on the lower end of development. It goes back to the three main dimensions of human development: health, education and standard of living.
The life expectancy at birth for the African Sub-Saharan countries is substantially lower than the majority of countries everywhere else in the world. For example, here are the life expectancies at birth for five countries in Sub- Saharan Africa: Mali- 48.1, Niger- 50.8, Chad- 48.6, Sierra Leone- 47.3 and Nigeria- 47.7. Here are the life expectancies at birth for five countries everywhere else: Canada- 80.6, Austria- 79.9, Chile- 78.5, China- 72.9 and India- 63.4. When looking at the low life expectancy in Sub- Saharan Africa there are several factors to this, however, diseases are probably by far the biggest problem affecting it. Another important thing to realize with life expectancy is that education and standard of living also greatly impact how long people will live.
The education component of the HDI in relation to Sub- Saharan Africa is also a complex issue. First of all, the culture in Sub-Saharan Africa is probably a lot different from all other areas of the world with regards to education, so education may not be valued and certainly not structured the same as everywhere else in the world. Diseases such as the HIV/ AIDS pandemic have really messed up the process of developing education systems in Sub- Saharan Africa. Then of course the resources for education are always a challenge; money, educators and supplies.
The standard of living in Sub- Saharan Africa is also much lower than just about everywhere else in the world. One of the major things to look at with standard of living is population. Sub- Saharan Africa is highly populated and continues to urbanize. Increased urbanization in Sub- Saharan Africa is also leading to increased poverty. When you have a lack of food, diseases, lack of education, and an increasing population living in poverty, it is hard to improve the standard of living.
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