Applicability of Human Development Index for Measuring Economic Well-being: A Study on GDP and HDI Indicators from Indian Context

Abstract

The tracking of gross domestic product (GDP) as a measure of well-being of the society or human-being has been debated by many researchers and economists (Elizabeth, 2007; Abhinav, 2014; Deb, 2015 ) There are many deficiencies in tracking GDP as the economic development indicator, as it does not capture the inequality or true development of Human-being. Noted economist Mehbub ul Haq’s human development project defined a composite matrix which captures the life expectancy, education and per capita indicators in one matrix. This was developed to track as a development indicator of human welfare. In the previous studies, the GDP or GDP per capita was regressed with the Human Development Index (HDI) composite index and indicated a direct correlation between the two variables. However, this article examines the contribution of the income component in the HDI index by recalculating the composite matrix. This article also qualitatively examines the ability of HDI index to measure the human development parameters. JEL Classification Codes: E01, I12, O1