The Human Development Index and Its Components

The Human Development Index (HDI) was introduced in the United Nations Development Programme's (UNDP) first Human Development Report in 1990, developed principally by the Pakistani economist Mahbub ul Haq in close collaboration with the Indian Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen, whose "capability approach" — the idea that development should be measured by the real freedoms and capabilities people have to live lives they value, not merely by income — provided the index's conceptual foundation. The HDI was explicitly conceived as a corrective to the near-exclusive use of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita as a proxy for national well-being, on the grounds that a country can grow richer in aggregate income while its population remains poorly educated or short-lived, and the index has been published annually (with occasional methodological revisions) in every Human Development Report since 1990, now covering more than 190 countries and territories.