Population Structure and the Human Development Index

Resumen

This paper provides an alternative way of measuring human development that takes explicitly into account the differences in the countries' population structures. The interest of this proposal stems from two complementary elements. First, that there is an enormous diversity in the population structures of those countries analysed in the Human Development Reports, particularly the shares of old people in the population. Second, that demographic characteristics are relevant in the evaluation of development possibilities. We propose to change the way of measuring health, education and material wellbeing, in order to take into account those differences in the population structures. We analyse empirically the effect induced by these changes in the evaluation of human development by comparing this way of measurement with the conventional HDI for 168 countries.