I was googling for some stats and ran against this Human Development Report website. It’s the usual UN-like stuff (there are some interesting interactive maps) but what caught my eye was this table where they compare their development index to the gini index (which measures inequality). Here are some interesting discrepancies:
| HDI Rank | Country | Gini index |
| 1 | Norway | 25.8 |
| 7 | United States | 40.8 |
| 32 | Czech Republic | 25.4 |
| 65 | Brazil | 60.7 |
| 139 | Bangladesh | 31.8 |
| 145 | Zimbabwe | 56.8 |
| 158 | Rwanda | 28.9 |
| 168 | Central African Republic | 61.3 |
| 171 | Burundi | 33.3 |
That means one of two things: Either the HD index is crap or inequality is not related to a country’s development. I won’t say that the HD index is the exact truth, but compared to the Gini numbers I think it’s pretty clear which is off.
6 comments
Comments feed for this article
July 9, 2007 at 10:18 pm
Patricia M.
Paulo, talvez possamos interpretar assim: no Burundi, em Bangladesh, como todo mundo eh pobre mesmo, nao ha inequality! Nao eh legal???? Eh o que querem fazer no Brasil tambem, nivelar por baixo…
July 10, 2007 at 10:57 pm
Leo
Paulo,
Kuznets curve it is a well-established fact in economics (as far as there are well-established facts in economics!
):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuznets_curve
(BTW, congratulations for the new looks of the blog!)
July 11, 2007 at 6:15 am
fyiblog
Leo
But these numbers don’t show such relatioship… You see devekoped countries with low and high numbers, and you also see undeveloped countries with high and low numbers…
The only explanation would be that the HD index doesn’t really measure economic development. But just by using common sense, it seems that it comes at least close to it.
July 11, 2007 at 12:31 pm
Leo
I told you that economics generalizations are not really precise…
Anyway, I do think that HDI is a good proxy for development, but you must remember that a well managed prison for white-collars would have a high HDI.
July 13, 2007 at 6:03 am
Na Prática
The Table only shows that there is no trivial relationship between the two indexes, but the Kuznet curve is an example of one somewhat more complex relationship. The interesting test would be the following: simulate Kuznet curves for each country, measure at what point the country is right now, and check if its deviations from the expected level of inequality have an impact on development.
December 14, 2008 at 1:49 pm
duh
There is a relationship, but all it means is that while people in Burundi have a low GINI and a low HDI, they are all equally poor. While in the United States, there are a lot of differences in incomes which results in the high GINI. doesnt mean USA is worse than Burundi, it just means that here we have some that makes millions and live well while others make modest salaries and still do well. Thats all.