PHM-Exch> The Rise and Fall of the G.D.P. (NYT Magazine)

[Claudio Schuftan]

From: HDR Announcements announcements at hdrdistribution.org

 A MUST READ, I THINK.
CLAUDIO

Related coverage of the HDI in the New York Times Magazine
The Rise and Fall of the G.D.P.

*10 May 2010*

So far only one measure has succeeded in challenging the hegemony of
growth-centric thinking. This is known as the Human Development
Index<http://e2ma.net/go/6678281643/208198029/212694239/36353/goto:http://hdr.undp.org/en/>,
which turns 20 this
year<http://e2ma.net/go/6678281643/208198029/212694240/36353/goto:http://hdr.undp.org/en/>.
The H.D.I. is a ranking that incorporates a nation’s G.D.P. and two other
modifying factors: its citizens’ education, based on adult literacy and
school-enrollment data, and its citizens’ health, based on life-expectancy
statistics. The H.D.I., which happens to be used by the United Nations, has
plenty of critics. For example, its three-part weightings are frequently
criticized for being arbitrary; another problem is that minor variations in
the literacy rates of developed nations, for example, can yield significant
differences in how countries rank.

One economist who helped create the Human Development Index was Amartya Sen,
a Nobel laureate in economics who teaches at Harvard. When I met with Sen on
a recent evening in New York, he suggested that if I wanted to place the
recent arguments about G.D.P., progress and economic growth into a
historical context, I should really take a minute to hear why and how the
Human Development Index came together.

Read More<http://e2ma.net/go/6678281643/208198029/212694241/36353/goto:http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/magazine/16GDP-t.html?emc=eta1>
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