UPPSC 2019 Prelims GS Paper-I · Question 114 of 150

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.

• (b)UNDP — 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)Mehbub-ul-Haq — 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)None of the above — 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.

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).

Composite-index questions are best learned as name-to-index pairs, because the examiner rotates the same four names. PQLI goes with Morris D. Morris; HDI goes with Mahbub ul Haq and the UNDP; the capability foundations go with Amartya Sen; and the Multidimensional Poverty Index goes with OPHI at Oxford together with the UNDP. The trap in this question is that (b) and (c) both point at the same later index, the HDI, so a candidate who remembers only 'UNDP made a quality-of-life index' has two attractive wrong options. Anchor on the distinguishing feature instead: the PQLI is the one that contains no income variable at all.

• PQLI was developed by Morris David Morris for the Overseas Development Council; his study was published in 1979
• Its three indicators are infant mortality rate, life expectancy at age one, and basic literacy rate
• Each indicator is scaled 0 to 100 and the three are averaged with equal weight; a higher PQLI is better
• The PQLI carries no income or GDP component — that was the point of building it
• The HDI, published by the UNDP from 1990 and credited to Mahbub ul Haq, uses life expectancy at birth, education, and GNI per capita at purchasing power parity
• Related UNDP measures: Human Poverty Index (introduced 1997), replaced by the Multidimensional Poverty Index in 2010

• Attributing the PQLI to the UNDP because it looks like an early HDI — the UNDP series begins only in 1990
• Writing 'life expectancy at birth' in the PQLI; it is life expectancy at age one
• Adding an income or GDP component to the PQLI — it has none, which is exactly what distinguishes it from the HDI

UPPSC asks who developed an index or which indicator it does or does not use, while UPSC prefers to test the composition of the index and how it is calculated, often by asking which variable is not part of it.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which of the following is NOT a component of the Physical Quality of Life Index (PQLI)?

  • (a)Infant mortality rate
  • (b)Basic literacy rate
  • (c)Life expectancy at age one
  • (d)Per capita income

  Answer(d) per capita income — the PQLI was deliberately built without any income variable, using only the three social indicators.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Human Development Index was first published in 1990 in the Human Development Report brought out by:

  • (a)World Bank
  • (b)United Nations Development Programme
  • (c)UNCTAD
  • (d)International Labour Organization

  Answer(b) the UNDP — the report and its index were led by Mahbub ul Haq, working with Amartya Sen's capability framework.