Which one of the following educational development indicators is currently used by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to construct Human Development Index?

Correct — C, Mean Years of Schooling. Since the Human Development Report of 2010 the education dimension of the index has been measured by two indicators together — mean years of schooling, which is the average number of years of education already completed by adults aged twenty-five and over, and expected years of schooling, which is the number a child entering school today can expect to receive. Only one of the two is offered here, and it is mean years of schooling. The other two dimensions are health, measured by life expectancy at birth, and standard of living, measured by gross national income per head at purchasing power parity.

• (a)Level of Literacy — The adult literacy rate was the main education indicator in the original index, but it was dropped in the 2010 revision. It measures a threshold rather than an amount, so it stops discriminating once most adults are literate.
• (b)Gross Enrolment Ratio — The other pre-2010 education indicator, which carried a one-third weight within the education dimension alongside adult literacy. It was replaced by expected years of schooling, which measures the same idea more precisely.
• (d)Dropout rate — Never used in the index at any stage. It is a real education statistic, but it captures failure to continue rather than the stock or the expected span of schooling that the index is built on.

The Human Development Index was introduced in the first Human Development Report in 1990 to shift the measurement of development away from income alone. It combines three dimensions — a long and healthy life, knowledge, and a decent standard of living — each normalised to a value between zero and one. Since 2010 the three are combined as a geometric mean rather than an arithmetic one, which means a country cannot offset a very poor score on one dimension with a very high score on another.

The examiner has built this item out of the 2010 revision, and the two discarded indicators are sitting in options (a) and (b) to catch anyone working from an older text. The word currently in the stem is the signal that a change has taken place and the current position is wanted. Note also that the question asks for an educational development indicator, so life expectancy and gross national income are not in play at all — the choice is among four education measures, only one of which the index uses. India's place in the index is the part that moves from report to report; the 2021-22 report placed India at 132 of 191 countries with a value of 0.633, and the rank and value have both changed in the editions since. What has not changed since 2010 is the pair of education indicators.

• The index has three dimensions — health, education and standard of living — and is published by the United Nations Development Programme.
• Education is measured by mean years of schooling for adults aged twenty-five and over together with expected years of schooling for a child entering school.
• Health is measured by life expectancy at birth and standard of living by gross national income per head at purchasing power parity.
• The original index used adult literacy and the gross enrolment ratio for education and gross domestic product per head for income; the 2010 report changed both.
• Since 2010 the three dimension indices are combined as a geometric mean, so weakness on one dimension cannot be fully offset by strength on another.

• Answering from the pre-2010 formulation and choosing literacy or enrolment.
• Forgetting that education has two indicators, not one, so a question can offer either.
• Reading gross national income and gross domestic product as interchangeable; the index switched from one to the other in 2010.

Index-composition items usually offer the superseded indicator as the most attractive wrong option, so read the stem for a word like currently that fixes the version being asked about.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The standard of living dimension of the Human Development Index is currently measured by

  • (a)Gross domestic product per capita at market prices
  • (b)Gross national income per capita at purchasing power parity
  • (c)Household consumption expenditure
  • (d)The poverty headcount ratio

  Answer(b) Gross national income per capita at purchasing power parity — the index switched from gross domestic product to gross national income in 2010.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which organisation publishes the Human Development Report?

  • (a)The World Bank
  • (b)The International Monetary Fund
  • (c)The United Nations Development Programme
  • (d)The World Economic Forum

  Answer(c) The United Nations Development Programme — the first report appeared in 1990.