Home ›› 18 Sep 2022 ›› Editorial
The terms growth and development are quite different although often used synonymously. Growth can be quantified by a simple numerical value such as the average GDP growth of Bangladesh is 7 per cent. The growth of GDP that we often see in the newspaper or official reports is real growth. The crude way of looking at GDP per capita as a macro parameter leads to many erroneous conclusions as this ignores the income distribution pattern. The concept of the Lorenz Curve and the derivative Gini Coefficient offers a better picture yet is not very close to the development fundamentals.
Therefore, quantification of development would be a challenge for development economists for the next few decades. The first such attempts at quantification were with the Physical Quality of Life Index [PQLI] by Morris David Morris in the mid- 1970s at the US Overseas Development Council. The PQLI considers the average value of three non-economic social indicators; basic literacy rate, infant mortality, and life expectancy at age one. “The conceptual process that leads to the development of the PQLI is highly instructive concerning the methodological dilemmas that confronted social index builders in the 1960s and 1970s.”
The PQLI was subsequently replaced by the Human Development Index [HDI] by the United Nations Development Program. Like PQLI, the index is based on three indicators: longevity, as measured by life expectancy at birth, educational attainment, and standard of living as measured by per capita income at Purchasing Power Parity.
The UNDP has been publishing Human Development Indices in their Human Development Reports [HDR] since 1990. HDI is more scientific and pragmatic in its approach and the raw mathematical calculation is converted into a scale. Thus educational attainment is measured as a weighted average of adult literacy rate with two-thirds weight, and combined gross primary, secondary and tertiary enrollment ratio with one-third weight. The overall Index value ranges from a value of 0 to 1.
Bangladesh’s HDI value was 0.397 and 0.485 in 1990 and 2000 respectively. The HDR report 2003 ranked Bangladesh at 139 with the value of 0.502 based on 2001 data [previous position 145] among 175 countries, the Maldives at position 86, Sri Lanka at 99, India at 127 followed by Bhutan at position 136 among the South Asian countries.
Bangladesh elevated her position from Low Human Development to Medium Human Development with a value of 0.502; a marginal elevation. The borderline status elevation was just 0.50 in 2003. However, the categorization value has subsequently been revised. The HDR value jumped from 0.553 in 2010 to 0.635 in 2018. The HDR 2020 and HDR 2019 position Bangladesh at 133 [HDI value 0.655] out of 189 countries and at 135 out of 185 countries with a value of 0.644. The country is still in the Medium Human Development Category; an improvement in the index value, just by 0.006 points from the previous year. The latest report HDR 2021-22 published on September 9, 2022, puts Bangladesh at 129 positions out of 191 countries with a value of 0.661. Indeed, Bangladesh could manage to maintain the status quo when the world is lurching from crisis to crisis.
Bangladesh is just behind Bhutan at 127 with a value of 0.666. India is at 132 with a value of 0.633 and Nepal is at 143 with a value of 0.602; all belong in the Medium Human Development Category. Bangladesh upgraded its position by 11 points during the period 2015-2021 and the average growth in the index during the period was 1.66 percent; a satisfactory figure in comparison to many other cohort countries.
The latest HDR, with the caption “Uncertain Times, Unsettled Lives: Shaping our Future in a Transforming World” argues that layers of uncertainty are stacking up and interacting to unsettle life in unprecedented ways. The last two years have had a devastating impact on billions of people around the world, when crises like COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine hit back-to-back, and interacted with sweeping social and economic shifts, dangerous planetary changes, and massive increases in polarization.”
The report categorically manifests that HDI has declined for two years in a row. Human development has fallen back to its 2016 levels, reversing much of the progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals.
The achievement is commendable but Bangladesh should strive for a higher elevation. There are 43 countries in the Medium category. Honduras is in the median position with a value of 0.621. There is still scope for enhancing the index value by stressing educational attainment and life expectancy at birth. The expected years of schooling and life expectancy at birth are capped at 18 years and 85 years.
The value of expected years of schooling in Bangladesh is 12.4 years [with mean years of schooling of 7.4 years] and the life expectancy at birth is 72.4 years. There is scope for improvement in these two areas. Besides, there is also scope for improvement in the Gener Inequality Index.
However, with a population of 166 million, Bangladesh may lags in the GNI per capita index as the per capita is capped at $75,000 against the current value of $ 5,472.
Maldives is considered an outlier in this year’s HDI with a value of 0.747 which put the country in a high human development category. The Maldives is at 90 out of 191 countries and territories; a better result from 2020 when the country was ranked 97 on the HDI list.
The increase in the HDI value for the Maldives in 2021 was due to the improvements in key HDI measurement indicators: life expectancy at birth from 78.9 to 79.9 years, expected years of schooling from 12.2 to 12.6 years, mean years of schooling from 7 to 7.3 years. However, Gross National Income (GNI) per capita experienced a reduction from $ 17,417 to $ 15,448 following the economic contractions of the pandemic but about three times higher than in Bangladesh.
An index comparable to HDI is the Inclusive Development Index [IDI] designed by the World Economic Forum which focuses more on the distributional issues materialized through inclusive socio-economic progress and broad-based improvement in living standards.
Bangladesh should focus more on allocation in education, health, and safety net programmes to help the marginalised people in improving their overall living standards and quality of life. That could boost the position from a three-digit to two-digit ranking.
The writer is a former Member, Directing Staff, Development and Economics Division, Bangladesh Public Administration Training Centre at Savar, Dhaka. He can be contacted at mirobaidurr7@ gmail.com
