Issue: Exclusive Issue/November 2010
Human development expert Dr. Seyhan Aydınlıgil analyzed the findings of the report presented by UNDP Resident Representative Shahid Najam. Najam and World Bank country director Ulrich Zachau answered student questions at the end of the seminar.
Najam also introduced the report to students at Harran University on 26 November 2010. At the conference where Urfa Governor Nuri Okutan and Harran University rector Prof. İbrahim Halil Mutlu gave opening speeches, dean of the Engineering Faculty Prof. Bülent Yeşilata moderated the event. Faculty of Economics staff member and development economist Prof. Abuzer Pınar discussed the findings of the report.
Next, UNDP Resident Representative Shahid Najam will present the report at Akdeniz University on 8 December 2010. The seminar which will be held in the scope of the UN Joint Programme “Growth with Decent Work for All” will be attended by the Faculty of Economic and Administrative Sciences Prof. Şafak Aksoy and Chair of the Economic Faculry Prof. Ali Koç. The seminar will take place at 3pm in Akdeniz University’s Prof. Yavuz Tekelioğlu Conference Hall.
Recent EU entrants among top performers in 2010 Human Development Index, with rising incomes and literacy rates, but countries of former Soviet Union losing ground in life expectancy in recent decades ,the 20th anniversary Report reveals.
The 20th anniversary edition of UNDP’s Human Development Report, in a detailed new review of global progress in recent decades as measured by the Human Development Index (HDI), shows that most Eastern European countries made major gains in this period of profound regional change, but the largest countries from the former Soviet Union suffered severe health setbacks.
The 2010 Report - The Real Wealth of Nations: Pathways to Human Development - examines progress in health, education and income since 1970, as measured by the HDI, for the 135 countries for which comparable data is available.
This 40-year period encompasses an era of profound political and economic transformation throughout the region, including the transition at the midpoint from the centralized controls of the Soviet era to the independence of the former Soviet republics and the reclaimed sovereignty and democratization of many other nations in the region. This was accompanied by a swift and often difficult integration into the international market economy, with sometimes disruptive impacts on health and living standards.
The 40-years trends analysis reveals that Eastern Europe and Central Asia have the highest “underperformance” rates – countries whose progress on the HDI is significantly below what would have been predicted by their initial stage of development. The greatest single factor in terms of HDI indicators was health: Average life expectancy in the Russian Federation dropped from 69 in 1970 to 67 in 2010, in neighboring Belarus from 71 to 70, and Ukraine from 71 to 69, the Report shows.
“Although the collapse of socialist and communist systems in Central and Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union presented new economic and political opportunities, the transition process affected countries in the region differently,” said Jeni Klugman, the Report’s lead author. “The introduction of democratic practices, for example, did not necessarily translate into sustained human development achievements.”
Literacy rates have been consistently high and increasing throughout Eastern Europe and Central Asia, with an average of 96 percent in 2010, up from 91 percent in 1970. In terms of years of schooling, the Czech Republic and Estonia perform best, each with an average of 12 years. Turkey lags behind, with 6.5 mean years of schooling, with the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (8.2 years) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (8.7).
Overall, Eastern Europe and Central Asia have a relatively high per capita income of US$11,462, but this varies from more than US$20,000 for European Union members like Slovakia and the Czech Republic to less than US$3,000 in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.
2010 Human Development Index
The 2010 HDI, which introduces technical adjustments to some its traditional indicators in health, education and income for 169 countries, illustrates a wide range of national development across Eastern Europe and Central Asia. (Due to the methodological refinements, the 2010 country rankings are not comparable to those from previous years.)
The eight countries in the top or ‘very high’ human development category in the new HDI are all recent European Union entrants: the Czech Republic (28), Slovenia (29), Slovakia (31), Malta (33), Estonia (34), Cyprus (35), Hungary (36) and Poland (41).Most other countries are in the second ‘high human development’ HDI quartile, with five in the ‘medium’ category: – Turkmenistan (87) and Moldova (99) as well as Uzbekistan (102), Kyrgyzstan (109) and Tajikistan (112).
In addition to the 40-year trends analysis and the 2010 HDI, the 2010 Human Development Report introduces three new indices that measure the scale and impact of extreme “multidimensional” poverty, inequality and gender gaps.
In its new measure of inequality, taking into account disparities in health, education and income in 139 countries, Eastern Europe emerges on average as the most equitable region in the developing world. The Czech Republic, Slovenia and Slovakia have the smallest losses – 6-7 percent – on the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index, while Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and the Baltic Republics experience losses of 11-12 percent; Turkmenistan suffered an HDI loss of 26.4 percent.
The Gender Inequality Index – which captures gender gaps in reproductive health, empowerment and workforce participation in 138 countries – reveals that the percentage of women in parliament is relatively low throughout the region, though they are close to parity with men in educational attainment and employment in most countries. The overall loss due to gender inequality in Eastern Europe and Central Asia is 19 percent; South Asia, by contrast, had the largest regional loss, with 35 percent.
Reports from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan suggest an upsurge in traditionalism with calls to re-establish polygamy and change laws to make it more difficult for women to initiate divorce. Arranged marriages have increased, and bride payments and “bride-napping” have re-emerged in some countries, the Report says.
The Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) – which identifies serious deprivations in health, education and living standards in 104 countries – shows that “multidimensional” poverty in Eastern Europe and Central Asia is relatively rare, affecting three percent of the population, compared to 10 percent in Latin America and 65 percent in sub-Saharan Africa, for example. Tajistan has the region’s highest share of multidimensionally poor, at 17 percent. But MPI rates are close to zero in several countries, with higher figures of 5-7 percent found in Azerbaijan, , Kyrgyzstan and Turkey. These relatively low figures reflect specific MPI indicators and do not imply an absence of otherwise severe economic hardship in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
Turkey’s ranking in the 2010 Human Development Index (HDI), puts the country behind all EU member states as well as other EU candidate countries, and places it below the OECD average. Also in the high human development category, countries like Bulgaria, Latvia, and Romania, all of which have lower per capita gross national income (PPP) levels compared to Turkey, rank higher in the index as a result of better mean years of schooling and life expectancy rates. Similarly, Turkey ranks lowest among the four EU candidate countries (others are Croatia, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Iceland) and all OECD countries.
With a 112% increase in national income in the past 30 years, Turkey has made noteworthy gains in economic growth, which have reflected in its Gross National Income. However, calculation methodology of the Human Development Index uses key data reflecting health and education levels of countries along with their national incomes. Turkey needs to focus its efforts in increasing the life expectancy at birth (72,2 years in 2010) and mean years of schooling (6,5 years in 2010) to achieve higher ranks in Human Development Index which will bring the country closer to OECD and EU standards.
The 2010 report introduces several adjustments in the indicators and methodology used to calculate the HDI, a summary measure for monitoring long-term progress in the average level of human development in three basic dimensions: a long and healthy life, access to knowledge and a decent standard of living. The indicators measuring access to knowledge and a decent standard of living have changed in the 2010 report. Mean years of adult education and expected years of schooling for children capture the concept of education better than the previous indicators and have stronger discriminating power across countries. Standard of living is now measured by Gross National Income (GNI) per capita in PPP US$, instead of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita in PPP US$. GNI adjusts the GDP for various factors and is therefore a better measure of a country’s level of income. It is thus misleading to compare values and rankings across published reports because the underlying data and methods have changed. Turkey’s HDI rank may be attributed to its mean years of schooling, where it is third from the bottom among high human development countries. At 6.5 years, mean years of schooling in Turkey is followed by Venezuela and Kuwait with 6.2 and 6.1 years, respectively. Mean years of schooling in Turkey is also almost half the OECD rate, which stands at 11.4 years based on 2010 figures.
Additionally, this year, three new indices have been introduced on an experimental basis. The Inequality Adjusted HDI (IHDI) takes into account not only the average achievements of a country on health, education and income, but also how those achievements are distributed among its citizens by “discounting” each dimension’s average value according to its level of inequality. The Gender Inequality Index (GII) is also a new measure built on the same framework as the HDI and IHDI to illuminate differences in the distribution of achievements between women and men. And the Multi-dimensional Poverty Index (MPI), identifies multiple deprivations in the same households in education, health and standard of living.
The IHDI equals the HDI when there is no inequality across people but is less than the HDI as inequality rises. It represents the actual level of human development. The IHDI takes into account not only the average achievements of a country on health, education and income, but also how those achievements are distributed among its citizens by “discounting” each dimension’s average value according to its level of inequality. When inequality enters the equation, Turkey’s HDI value falls to 0.518, losing 24% of its original HDI rank. The loss for Bulgaria is only half that value with 11.3% while Romania also loses 12.1% of its initial HDI value, because of inequalities.
Reflecting women’s disadvantages in reproductive health, empowerment and economic activity, the Gender Inequality Index (GII) ranks Turkey 77th out of 138 countries, below neighbors like Armenia and Georgia. While women occupy only 9% of seats in the parliament in Turkey, they occupy 31.7% of the seats in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Such figures indicate that Turkey needs to take affirmative action in strengthening measures to ensure gender equality in social, economic and political fields.
Following Peru and Colombia; Turkey and Brazil have the highest MPI value among high human development countries, reflecting deprivation in education, health and other living conditions. At 0.039, the country’s MPI is one of the highest in the Eastern Europe and Central Asia region, along with Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan. According to the 2010 report, 8% of the population suffers multiple deprivations while an additional 19% are vulnerable to multiple deprivations.
Looking at the bigger picture, Turkey’s HDI value shot from 0.467 to 0.679 from 1980 to 2010, equaling a total increase of 45%. This increase ranks Turkey 14th in terms of HDI improvement in comparison to the average progress of countries with a similar initial HDI level. In 30 years, Turkey’s life expectancy at birth increased by almost 12 years, mean years of schooling increased by close to 4 years and expected years of schooling increased by almost 5 years. The most impressive gains were made in Gross National Income (GNI) per capita, increasing by 112% between 1980 and 2010.
Turkey ranks 83rd
Turkey’s HDI value for 2010 is 0.679—in the high human development category—positioning the country at 83 out of 169 countries and areas. Between 1980 and 2010, Turkey’s HDI value increased from 0.467 to 0.679, an increase of 45 per cent or average annual increase of about 1.3 per cent.
With such an increase Turkey is ranked 14 in terms of HDI improvement based on deviation from fit, which measures progress in comparison to the average progress of countries with a similar initial HDI level.
Between 1980 and 2010, Turkey’s life expectancy at birth increased by almost 12 years, mean years of schooling increased by close to 4 years and expected years of schooling increased by almost 5 years. Turkey’s GNI per capita increased by 112 per cent during the same period.
Long-term progress can be usefully assessed relative to a country’s neighbours -- both in terms of geographical location and HDI value. For instance, in 1980, Turkey, Bulgaria and Latvia had close HDI values for countries in Europe and Central Asia. However, during the period between 1980 and 2010 the three countries experienced different degrees of progress toward increasing their HDIs.
Turkey’s 2010 HDI of 0.679 is below the average of 0.717 for countries in Europe and Central Asia. It is also below the average of 0.717 for high human development countries. From Europe and Central Asia, Turkey’s 2010 “HDI neighbours”, i.e. countries which are close in HDI rank and population size, are Serbia and Azerbaijan, which had HDIs ranked 60 and 67 respectively.
Gender equality measures must be taken
Reflecting women’s disadvantages in reproductive health, empowerment and economic activity, the Gender Inequality Index (GII) ranks Turkey 77th out of 138 countries, below neighbors like Armenia and Georgia. While women occupy only 9% of seats in the parliament in Turkey, they occupy 31.7% of the seats in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Such figures indicate that Turkey needs to take affirmative action in strengthening measures to ensure gender equality in social, economic and political fields.
In Turkey, a mere 9 per cent of parliamentary seats are held by women, and 27 per cent of adult women have a secondary or higher level of education compared to 47 per cent of their male counterparts. For every 100,000 live births, 44 women die from pregnancy related causes; and the adolescent fertility rate is 39 births per 1000 live births. Female participation in the labour market is 27 per cent compared to 75 per cent for men. The result is a GII value for Turkey of 0.621 ranking it 77 out of 138 countries based on 2008 data. Turkey’s “HDI neighbour”, Azerbaijan, is ranked 62nd on this index.
[BAGLANTILAR]
The 2010 Human Development Report, released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) today, features three innovative new measurements complementing the Report’s traditional Human Development Index (HDI): the Inequality-adjusted HDI, the Gender Inequality Index and the Multidimensional Poverty Index.
“These new measures are major methodological advances that can pinpoint problems and successes in a country, and help to develop ideas and policies that can improve people’s lives,” said Jeni Klugman, the Report’s lead author.
The 2010 Report, The Real Wealth of Nations: Pathways to Human Development, introduces the Inequality-adjusted HDI, a measure of human development that accounts for inequality. Under perfect equality, the HDI and Inequality-adjusted HDI are identical. The HDI for an average individual is less than the aggregate HDI when there is inequality in the distribution of health, education and income; the lower the Inequality-adjusted HDI (and the greater the difference between it and the HDI), the greater the inequality.
• The average loss in the HDI due to inequality is 24 percent—adjusted for inequality, the global HDI of 0.68 in 2010 would fall to 0.52, which would represent a drop from the high to the medium HDI category in the world average. Losses range from 6 percent (Czech Republic) to 45 percent (Mozambique), with 80 percent of countries losing more than 10 percent, and 40 percent of countries losing more than 25 percent.
• Countries with lower human development tend to have greater inequality—and thus larger losses in human development: Namibia lost 44 percent in the new Inequality-adjusted HDI, the Central African Republic 42 percent and Haiti 41 percent.
“The Inequality-adjusted HDI shows that in many countries, despite overall average development achievement, far too many people are being left behind,” Klugman said.
The 2010 Report also presents the Gender Inequality Index (GII), a new measure built on the same framework as the HDI and Inequality-adjusted HDI to illuminate differences in the distribution of achievements between women and men. Measuring indicators such as maternal mortality rates and women’s representation in parliaments, the GII shows that: • Gender inequality varies tremendously across countries—losses in achievements due to gender inequality range from 17 percent in the Netherlands to 85 percent in Yemen.
• The 10 least gender-equal countries (in descending order) are Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, Central African Republic, Papua New Guinea, Afghanistan, Mali, Niger, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Yemen, with an average GII of 0.79. The most gender-balanced societies under the GII are the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden.
• Countries with unequal distribution of human development also experience high inequality between women and men, and countries with high gender inequality experience unequal distribution of human development. Countries doing very poorly in both categories include the Central African Republic, Haiti and Mozambique.
• Qatar is farthest from gender equality among high-HDI countries; Burundi is the closest to gender equality among low-HDI countries, as is China in the medium-HDI group.
“Providing girls and women with equal educational opportunities, medical care, legal rights and political representation is not only socially just, but one of the best possible investments in development for all people,” Klugman said. “The Gender Inequality Index is designed to help advance human development progress by objectively measuring the extent and impact of the persistent social disparities between men and women.”
This year’s report also introduces the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), which complements income-based poverty measures. The MPI identifies deprivations across the same dimensions as the HDI—health, education and living standards—and shows the number of people who are multidimensionally poor and the deprivations that they face on the household level. The MPI uses 10 indicators; a household is counted as poor if it is deprived in more than three of those areas. The MPI can be deconstructed by region, ethnicity and other groupings as well as by dimension. It can also be adapted further for national use.
Key findings include:
• About 1.7 billion people in the 104 countries covered by the MPI—a third of their population—suffer from multidimensional poverty. This exceeds the estimated 1.3 billion people in those countries estimated to live on $1.25 a day or less.
• Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest incidence of multidimensional poverty, averaging 65 percent and ranging from a low of 3 percent in South Africa to a massive 93 percent in Niger. Yet half the world’s poor people, according to the MPI, are in South Asia—844 million—compared to a total of 458 million in sub-Saharan Africa.
The Multidimensional Poverty Index was produced for the 2010 Human Development Report by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative at the University of Oxford, with UNDP support, as an innovative alternative to the Reports’ formerly used Human Poverty Index.
For further information on the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index, Gender Inequality Index, Multidimensional Poverty Index and other information contained in the 2010 Human Development Report, please visit here.
The website features the new Human Development Report in nine different language editions in hardcover and online.
The 20th anniversary Report includes the new Human Development Index (HDI) and three new supplementary indices: the Inequality-adjusted HDI, the Gender Inequality Index and the Multidimensional Poverty Index.
In its major innovations, the Human Development Report website also now features:
• A user-friendly “build your own index” option, drawing on extensive HDI databases
• An interactive visualization tool for all countries in the HDI
• An interactive map with the latest international development statistics
• An updated database permitting long-term statistical comparisons
With these new online tools and a greatly expanded database of international data, visitors can explore statistics, generate graphs and images, extract tables of data, and retrieve country profiles with the most current internationally vetted statistics on income, health, education and other development areas.
As has always been UNDP policy, all reports and data on the hdr.undp.org website can be accessed and downloaded free of charge. This includes all 20 years of the annual Human Development Reports, including the 2010 Report, which are available in the most current PDF and e-book formats.
Background research for the reports is also available on line. Since 1990, 140 countries have adopted the Human Development Report framework for their own policy and analytical purposes, producing more than 600 national Human Development Reports with UNDP support. Most are also available on the website.
UNDP has also sponsored scores of independently drafted regional reports, such as the much-praised ten-volume Arab Human Development Report series, which can also be downloaded free of charge. The website – available in English, French and Spanish, with portals to Human Development Reports and other materials in many other languages – features new videos showcasing multi-generational families around the world telling their own personal stories about human development progress over the past several decades.
The website also has an exclusive video interview on the origins and impact of the Human Development Report with Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, who helped develop the HDI with report series founder Mahbub ul Haq. Videos on human development subjects, including climate change, migration and water scarcity, are also available on the website.
For the 20th anniversary of the Report, The Real Wealth of Nations: Pathways to Human DevelopmentFor the 20th anniversary of the Report, The Real Wealth of Nations: Pathways to Human Development, the 2010 HDI uses data and methodologies that were not available in most countries in 1990 for the dimensions of income, education and health. Gross National Income per capita replaces Gross Domestic Product per capita, to include income from remittances and international development assistance, for example. The upper ‘cap’ on income for index weighting purposes was removed to give countries that had surpassed the previous US$40,000 limit an HDI, better reflecting real income levels.
In education, expected years schooling for school-age children replaces gross enrolment, and average years of schooling in the adult population replaces adult literacy rates, to provide a fuller picture of education levels. Life expectancy remains the main indicator for health.
This year’s HDI should not be compared to the HDI that appeared in previous editions of the Human Development Report due to the use of different indicators and calculations. The 2010 HDI charts national ranking changes over five-year intervals, rather than on a year-to-year basis.
“Annual changes in national HDI rankings don’t tell us much about the reality of development, which is inherently a long-term process,” explained Jeni Klugman, lead author of the Report.
Micronesia has entered the HDI table for the first time this year, while Zimbabwe has re-entered after not being included in 2009 due to missing income values. Fourteen countries, Antigua and Barbuda, Bhutan, Cuba, Dominica, Eritrea, Grenada, Lebanon, Oman, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, Seychelles and Vanuatu, as well as the occupied Palestinian territories, have been dropped from the HDI due to a lack of internationally compiled and verified data. For example, four countries have information on all HDI components except for Gross National Income: Cuba, Iraq, Marshall Islands and Palau.
The indicators of the three dimensions are calibrated and combined to generate an HDI score between zero and one. Countries are grouped into four human development categories or quartiles: very high, high, medium and low. A country is in the very high group if its HDI is in the top quartile, in the high group if its HDI is in percentiles 51–75, in the medium group if its HDI is in percentiles 26–50, and in the low group if its HDI is in the bottom quartile.
In addition to the 2010 HDI, the Report includes three new indices: the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index, the Gender Inequality Index and the Multidimensional Poverty Index. Tables on various measures of human development are also available, including demographic trends, the economy, education, health and more.
For the first time since 1990, the Report looks back rigorously at the past several decades and identifies often surprising trends and patterns with important lessons for the future. These varied pathways to human development show that there is no single formula for sustainable progress—and that impressive long-term gains can and have been achieved even without consistent economic growth.
According to the 2010 HDI, Norway, Australia and New Zealand leading the world in HDI achievement with Niger, Democratic Republic of Congo and Zimbabwe at the bottom of the annual rankings.
Each year, the HDI and other indices are published as part of the global Human Development Report. Global Human Development Reports frame debates on some of the most pressing challenges facing humanity from climate change to human rights. Human Development Reports are independent reports, commissioned by UNDP.
The reports rely on international data agencies with the mandate, resources and expertise to collect international data on specific indicators. The Report is translated into more than a dozen languages and launched in more than 100 countries annually.
Celebrating its 20th anniversary, the 2010 report “The Real Wealth of Nations: Pathways to Human Development” reaffirms the basic concept of human development as the expansion of people’s freedoms to live long, healthy and creative lives; to advance other goals they have reason to value; and to engage actively in shaping development equitably and sustainably on a shared planet. For further information about the report please visit here.