Bottom Rail on Top: The Shifting Sands of Sustainable Development Indicators as Tools to Assess Progress

Stephen Morse

doi:10.3390/su5062421

Abstract

The Human Development Index (HDI) is often employed to capture some of the more social concerns in sustainable development at the scale of the nation-state. The HDI is founded on three components; life expectancy, education and income per capita. To avoid a dominance of the income component, proxied by Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita per annum, it has been capped at a maximum level and transformed. Two methods for transforming the GDP/capita have been employed; the Atkinson transformation (1991 to 1998) and the Logarithmic transformation (all other years). The paper explores the impact that these transformations have had on the HDI rankings of 167 countries, by comparing the rank across two periods; 1991 to 1998 and 1999 to 2009. Results suggest that for the 167 countries in the dataset, the majority (65%) showed a high resilience to the transformations. For these countries, the use of the two alternatives does not alter the difference seen in the original ranking between the two periods. A significant proportion of countries had a medium (18%) and low (17%) resilience to the methodology for handling GDP/capita. For those countries the choice of methodology does matter in terms of their ranking, with some doing better and others worse relative to the original ranking. Consistency in methodology is desirable in order to avoid such misrepresentations but so is some flexibility to allow for new knowledge and experience. One can also question the value of the league table style of presentation so often employed with sustainable development indices given that change in rank for at least some countries is so vulnerable to shifts in methodology.

Highlights

Efforts have been underway for many years to measure progress towards sustainable development, including the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) initiative
Consistency in methodology is desirable in order to avoid such misrepresentations but so is some flexibility to allow for new knowledge and experience
In the cases of Brunei Darussalam (Figure 1a) and Qatar (Figure 1b) the ranks based on the original Human Development Index (HDI) values improved between 1998 and 1999, suggesting that the countries went up the HDI league table, whereas the ranks for Turkey (Figure 1c) and Tunisia (Figure 1d) worsened suggesting that they went down the HDI league table

Summary

Introduction

Efforts have been underway for many years to measure progress (or not) towards sustainable development, including the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) initiative. The logic is compelling; there needs to be some means of assessing progress otherwise it is not possible to select the right interventions It follows from this that it is possible to know what sustainable development should look like, or perhaps more realistically to know what it should not look like. Given that those expected to make sustainability happen are typically those who may not necessarily have any technical expertise regarding such data tools are required to help convey what can be highly complex information. Given this chain of reasoning it is no wonder that quantitative indicators and indices, where an index is a single figure produced by combining a number of indicators, have emerged as the popular way forward. Indicators allow the conveying of complex information and a comparison of current state against a notional target (as in the eight MDGs for example), but can help frame what is meant by sustainable development

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Conclusion