Troubling Tradeoffs in the Human Development Index
Troubling Tradeoffs in the Human Development Index
复制标题
人类发展指数中令人不安的权衡
DOI：
10.1596/1813-9450-5484
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发表时间：
2010
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
M. Ravallion
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
M. Ravallion
第20次人类发展报告介绍了其著名的人类发展指数的新版本。人类发展指数汇总了国家一级在预期寿命、教育和人均收入方面的成就。人类发展指数每年的排名在富国和穷国都受到密切关注。2010年人类发展指数的主要变化是，它放宽了过去关于其三个组成部分之间完全可替代性的假设。然而，大多数用户可能没有意识到，新的人类发展指数也大大降低了贫穷国家相对于富裕国家对寿命的隐含权重。一个贫穷国家由于（比如）医疗体系崩溃而导致预期寿命下降，即使经济增长率很低，其人类发展指数仍然可以提高。相比之下，新的人类发展指数对额外教育收益的估值似乎高得不合理--比教育的经济回报高出许多倍。这些令人不安的权衡本来可以在很大程度上避免使用不同的聚合函数的人类发展指数，同时仍然允许不完美的替代。虽然在构建和评估人类发展指数时面临着一些困难的价值判断，但使其假设的权衡更加明确将是一个值得欢迎的步骤。
The 20th Human Development Report has introduced a new version of its famous Human Development Index (HDI). The HDI aggregates country-level attainments in life expectancy, schooling and income per capita. Each year's rankings by the HDI are keenly watched in both rich and poor countries. The main change in the 2010 HDI is that it relaxes its past assumption of perfect substitutability between its three components. However, most users will probably not realize that the new HDI has also greatly reduced its implicit weight on longevity in poor countries, relative to rich ones. A poor country experiencing falling life expectancy due to (say) a collapse in its health-care system could still see its HDI improve with even a small rate of economic growth. By contrast, the new HDI's valuations of the gains from extra schooling seem unreasonably high -- many times greater than the economic returns to schooling. These troubling tradeoffs could have been largely avoided using a different aggregation function for the HDI, while still allowing imperfect substitution. While some difficult value judgments are faced in constructing and assessing the HDI, making its assumed tradeoffs more explicit would be a welcome step.