The Human Development Index: A critical evaluation and a new proposal

Abstract

The Human Development Index is used as an alternative indicator to GDP to measure development. This index shows a theoretical and empirical revolution. It representsone of the most popular composite indices for socio-economic analysis and measurement of development. Nervertheless, the climate change has highlighted one of the main limitations of this index, i.e the absence of variable related to environmental sustainability. The introduction of the environmental dimension significantly increases the potential of HDI. This paper tries to propose an extension of the HDI, including an environmental aspect in the evaluation. However, it is a synthetic and systematic indicator, so that studies show limitations and gaps in terms of measurement related to the environmental dimension, but also the absence of variables that explain how a population concretely contributes to progress according to development prospects.