Physical Quality of Life Index (PQLI) is developed by

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — A, Morris D. Morris. The Physical Quality of Life Index was constructed by the American economic historian Morris David Morris in the late 1970s for the Overseas Development Council, and set out in his 1979 study 'Measuring the Condition of the World's Poor: The Physical Quality of Life Index'. Morris wanted a single number that would show whether economic growth was actually reaching people, so he deliberately left income out and built the index from three social outcomes only — the infant mortality rate, life expectancy at age one, and the basic literacy rate. Each indicator is converted to a scale of 0 to 100, in which 0 is the worst performance observed and 100 the best, and the three are averaged with equal weight. The PQLI is therefore the direct ancestor of the later human development indices, and the one named after an individual scholar.

Why the other options are wrong — (b) The United Nations Development Programme is the publisher of the Human Development Report from 1990 onwards and of the Human Development Index, the Human Poverty Index and the Multidimensional Poverty Index — not the PQLI, which was an Overseas Development Council product and predates the UNDP series by more than a decade.  (c) Mahbub ul Haq, the Pakistani economist, is the architect of the Human Development Index, which he built for the first Human Development Report in 1990 drawing on Amartya Sen's capability approach. Unlike the PQLI, his index does include income, in the form of GNI per capita at purchasing power parity.  (d) Only correct if no listed name were the author. Morris David Morris is the accepted author of the PQLI, so option (a) is available and this option fails.

Concept: The PQLI belongs to the 1970s revolt against measuring development by GNP alone. Its three components are chosen so that they capture outcomes rather than inputs: infant mortality reflects nutrition, sanitation and mother-and-child health; life expectancy at age one reflects the broader disease and health environment; and basic literacy reflects education and, indirectly, the ability to take part in public life. Life expectancy is taken at age one rather than at birth precisely because infant deaths are already counted by the first indicator, and Morris did not want the same deaths pulling the index down twice. Ten years later the UNDP took the same logic further with the Human Development Index, which keeps the health and education dimensions but adds a capped income measure, and the family later grew to include the Human Poverty Index (1997) and the Multidimensional Poverty Index (2010).

State PCS 2019 Q114 — Economy PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2019 Q114 — Economy PYQ with Answer