Do you think additional information or data could be added to the HDI calculation to possibly improve it or make it a more accurate measurement of human development? If yes, what things? If no, why no? Keep in mind the conversation with Tyler Cowen.

Based on my understanding, the Human Development Index (HDI) is an index that ranks all 193 United Nations member states as well as Palestine and Hong Kong based on three dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, knowledge, and decent living standards. The indicators used to quantify how countries perform vary throughout the years and are later compared with other nations. For the year 2020, “life expectancy at birth; expected years of schooling for children; mean years of schools of schooling for adults and gross national income per capita’’, was used for example. With this data information and analysis, a health index, an education index and an income index all with values between 0 and 1 were all created. Somalia was ranked the lowest HDI with 0.361.

I believe that additional information that hasn’t already been analyzed by HDI, such as age, gender, or even income should be incorporated. This could change an entire country’s ranking on the scale and maybe help them ascend. Depending on these factors, each person’s socio-economic condition may change because we’re not all equal in every aspect. The HDI should continue to include different ranges of effective methods to evaluate the performance of each nation because the main issue with the system at the moment is that it reflects long-term changes (e.g., life expectancy). This limits the response of recent short term changes and doesn’t allow for them to be evaluated.