NationStates Jolt Archive


Your nation's Human Development Index

Ariddia
18-04-2006, 18:17
I don't think this has ever been done before; correct me if I'm wrong. The Human Development Index (HDI) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index) is a theoretical measure of the well-being of a population. If you're interested in calculating your nation's HDI, a list, ranking or database of sorts could be established.

The HDI is established on the basis of three factors: life expectancy, education and GDP.

How to calculate your nation's HDI

1. Life expectancy

This one's reasonably simple. Take your population's average life expectancy, and subtract 25. Divide the result by 60. You'll obtain a life expectancy index between 0 and 1. (If it's above or below, consider it to be 0 or 1 accordingly.)

Example for Ariddia:
78.6-25= 53.6
53.6/60= 0.89

2. Education

This one's more complex. The education index relies on two sub-factors. First, adult literacy. Take the percentage of literate adults in your nation, and divide it by 100 to get an index between 0 and 1.

For Ariddia: 99.6/100= 0.996

The second factor is enrolment in education. To calculate this, establish what percentage of your nation's children which could/should attend primary education actually do so, and establish the percentage also for secondary and teriary education. Calculate the average of these three percentages. Now divide it by 100 to obtain an index between 0 and 1.

(Or, if you can't be bothered, just assign an index as you see fit, between 0 and 1. ;) )

For Ariddia: 97.5/100= 0.975

Last step: The final index for education is two thirds of the adult literacy index + one third of the education enrolment index.

For example, for Ariddia: 2/3x0.996 + 1/3x0.975= 0.664 + 0.325 = 0.989

3. GDP

The complexity of this one would be fairly ghastly, so I've simplified it. Your nation has got a UN classification for its economy - somewhere between Imploded and Frightening. There are 15 ranks. Using this page (http://ns.goobergunch.net/wiki/index.php/Economic%2C_Political%2C_and_Civil_Rankings), you can see where your nation ranks (between 1 and 15). Simply take that number between 1 and 15, and divide it by 15, to obtain an index between 0.07 and 1.

For example, Ariddia's economy is Imploded, so 1/15= 0.07.

Total

You now have three indexes: one for life expectancy, one for education and one for GDP. Add them up, and divide the total by 3. Hey presto, a Human Development index, which should normall be between 0 and 10. ;)

For Ariddia: 0.89 + 0.989 + 0.07 = 1.949
Divided by 3, that gives Ariddia an HDI of 0.65.
Pantocratoria
18-04-2006, 18:44
It has been done before, by Ceorana. For more information, have a look at: http://ns.goobergunch.net/wiki/index.php/CHDI

Nice effort though!
Ariddia
18-04-2006, 21:31
Ah, OK. Thanks!
Pantocratoria
19-04-2006, 04:38
Don't thank me, thank Ceorana. TG him if you want to the Ceorana Department of State to calculate your CHDI and put it up on that wiki page by the way. Ceo uses the webgame's XML stats to do it.
Ariddia
20-04-2006, 13:48
Speaking of which... Any idea who started this (http://ns.goobergunch.net/wiki/index.php?title=List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index)? The creator is unidentified, and there are no other contributions listed for him/her.

Makes me wonder whether it was inspired by this thread, or just a coincidence. There's nothing in its Discussion page either.

[Edit:] Hmm, actually there seems to be something wrong with the NSwiki in general. All the new pages of these past few hours come up empty. Never mind; I'll take a look again later, and if it doesn't fix itself on its own I'll report (http://ns.goobergunch.net/wiki/index.php/NSwiki:Village_pump) the problem in the NSwiki...