The Human Development Index - going beyond income
Argentina
Each year since 1990 the Human Development Report has published the human development index (HDI) which looks beyond GDP to a broader definition of well-being. The HDI provides a composite measure of three dimensions of human development: living a long and healthy life (measured by life expectancy), being educated (measured by adult literacy and enrolment at the primary, secondary and tertiary level) and having a decent standard of living (measured by purchasing power parity, PPP, income). The index is not in any sense a comprehensive measure of human development. It does not, for example, include important indicators such as gender or income inequality and more difficult to measure indicators like respect for human rights and political freedoms. What it does provide is a broadened prism for viewing human progress and the complex relationship between income and well-being.
The HDI for Argentina is 0.869, which gives the country a rank of 38th out of 177 countries with data (Table 1).
| Table 1: Argentina’s human development index 2005 | ||||
| HDI value | Life expectancy at birth (years) |
Adult literacy rate (% ages 15 and older) |
Combined primary, secondary and tertiary gross enrolment ratio (%) |
GDP per capita ( |
http://hdrstats.undp.org/countries/country_fact_sheets/cty_fs_ARG.html
