ICBED April-2018Sample Page
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The Human Development Index of Indiana Counties – An Exploratory Study |
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Keywords (Font size 12, Bold) 1. Introduction (Font size 12 for headings, Text size 11) It is important for communities, states, and countries to measure human development. The fast changing new knowledge economy demands that communities assess their human capital for competitive advantage and base their public policies related to health, education, and living standards, accordingly. The availability and quality of human capital in an area ultimately determines economic development opportunities through private investment and migration patterns. The concept of “Human Development” (HD) goes well beyond the Human Development Index (HDI). Human Development has been defined as people having choices for a healthy life, good education, and a decent standard of living. However, HDI alone does not encompass many other important dimensions of HD such as; political freedom, guaranteed human rights, and self-respect' (Ranis, Stewart, and Samman, 2006). Various countries have focused on improving their human development. Porter (1989) mentions that poor quality of human capital in Italy negatively influenced its economic performance. Aahad M. Osman-Cani et al. (1998) concluded that Singapore's remarkable economic development has been due to investment in
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There are nine UNDP classified human development indicators that are used to measure human development, but for the purpose of the present study, only three indicators; income, health and education indicators in form of HDI index, are used because these three indicators are broad human development indicators predominant in the body of literature. 3. Data and Methodology (Font size 12) The human development index (HDI) is a combined index of three different dimensions – Health, Education and Living standards , considered important by United Nations Development Program (UNDP) to measure the human development. This index measures level of human development in countries and compare nations in order of their index. This methodology could be applied to find the human development index at a local level (counties) in each of the states of United States. This index, expressed as a value between 0 and 100, provides the ith indicator's contribution to the human development index for jth county in Indiana. The higher the ith index for a county, the better the ith indicator is for that county. Since we have taken the geometric mean of dimensions, the county that was ranked last in any one of these dimensions, received a zero for the human development index.
The health dimension is measured using the life expectancy at birth in 2007 and years of potential life lost data from 2006 to 2008, for each Indiana County. The education dimension is calculated using the enrollment data (9th grade to 12th grade, and college enrollment) and attainment data (population with high school degree or more and college degree or more) in the year 2010. The living standards dimension is evaluated using the per-capita income and average monthly earnings data in 2010. The indexes for these three dimensions (health, education and |
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The analysis presented in this study is far from being conclusive, but certainly suggests that there are tremendous disparities and inequalities in different counties. Due to fiscal and political pressures over the last several years, state and local governments in the United States have begun to assess their economic and human development growth measures in order to improve social and economic development. The findings of this study provide a measure to help local governments (counties) as well as the state government of Indiana to evaluate the effectiveness and success of their human development efforts. The study may provide information for their development prioritization efforts. The governor and mayors of different counties may gain valuable insight into addressing policy problems.
Based on the findings of the study, future research may replicate the same model using a different data set. It will be interesting to test the same model using data on other states and counties. Also, it could be tested to see whether the elderly population and location of colleges in a county has any relationship with the three dimensions of the human development index. Future research may also consider using different indicators of housing, infrastructure and environment, Information Access, wealth, technological diffusion, and environmental quality in addition other indicators to capture the human development construct.
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