UPPSC 2024 Prelims GS Paper-I · Question 92 of 150

Correct — C, Only 1, 2 and 4. The UNDP's Human Development Index is built on exactly three dimensions, and the question lists all three plus one intruder. (1) Income level — a decent standard of living, measured by Gross National Income per capita at purchasing power parity. (2) Education — knowledge, measured by two indicators together, the mean years of schooling of adults aged 25 and above and the expected years of schooling of a child of school-entering age. (4) Life expectancy — a long and healthy life, measured by life expectancy at birth. Those four indicators are combined into three dimension indices, each normalised on a 0-1 scale, and since the 2010 Human Development Report the three are aggregated by a geometric mean rather than a simple average, precisely so that a country cannot buy a good HDI score by excelling on income while failing on health. Statement (3), the condition of the environment, is the falsifier: no environmental variable enters the HDI at any stage. That is not an oversight the UNDP is unaware of — its Human Development Report 2020 answered the criticism by publishing a separate index, the Planetary pressures-adjusted HDI, which discounts a country's HDI by its per-capita carbon dioxide emissions and its per-capita material footprint. The point for the exam is that this adjustment produces a different index published alongside the HDI; it does not become part of the HDI. So the codes that survive are 1, 2 and 4, which is option (c).

• (a)Only 1, 2 and 3 — Wrong twice over: it admits the environment, which the HDI does not measure, and it drops life expectancy, which is the HDI's oldest and least disputable component. Health was in the index from the first Human Development Report in 1990 and has never been altered — life expectancy at birth has always carried the 'long and healthy life' dimension, while the education and income indicators were both redefined in 2010. Any option that leaves life expectancy out cannot describe the HDI.
• (b)Only 1 and 4 — Keeps two genuine components, income and life expectancy, but silently deletes education. Knowledge is a full one-third of the index, and it is the dimension that carries two of the HDI's four indicators — mean years of schooling and expected years of schooling. This option is a description of a two-dimensional welfare measure, not of the HDI.
• (d)Only 1 and 2 — Drops life expectancy, the health dimension. It is worth seeing why this option is tempting: income and education are the two things a candidate most readily associates with 'development', and health can feel like an outcome rather than an indicator. In the HDI, however, longevity is a dimension in its own right, and the whole point of Mahbub ul Haq's design was to stop income from standing in for human well-being.

The Human Development Index was created by the Pakistani economist Mahbub ul Haq, working with Amartya Sen, and was first published in the UNDP's Human Development Report of 1990. Its purpose was to displace GNP per capita as the single measure of a country's progress by insisting that people, not money, are the real wealth of nations. The architecture has stayed remarkably stable: three dimensions — a long and healthy life, knowledge, and a decent standard of living — with the indicators refined once, in the 2010 Report, when the education dimension moved from adult literacy plus gross enrolment to mean and expected years of schooling, the income indicator moved from GDP per capita to GNI per capita (PPP), and the arithmetic mean was replaced by a geometric mean.

Answer this by asking what the HDI was designed to do rather than by asking what 'development' ought to include. Environmental condition, gender equality, inequality, employment and political freedom are all legitimate parts of development and none of them is in the HDI — the UNDP handles each through a separate companion index, which is exactly why it publishes a family of indices rather than one. Inequality goes to the Inequality-adjusted HDI, gender to the Gender Inequality Index and the Gender Development Index, deprivation to the Multidimensional Poverty Index, and planetary pressure to the Planetary pressures-adjusted HDI. Once the candidate has that map, the three-versus-four decision in this question is mechanical: strike out any statement that names something a companion index measures, and check that all three real dimensions survive. Note also that both (b) and (d) drop a real dimension — the examiner is testing whether you can name all three, not merely spot the intruder.

• HDI = geometric mean of three dimension indices: health (life expectancy at birth), education (mean years of schooling of adults 25+ and expected years of schooling of children) and standard of living (GNI per capita, PPP).
• First published in the UNDP Human Development Report 1990; conceived by Mahbub ul Haq with Amartya Sen, whose capability approach supplies its theoretical basis.
• The 2010 Human Development Report changed the indicators — education moved from adult literacy plus gross enrolment to mean/expected years of schooling, income from GDP to GNI per capita (PPP), and the aggregation from an arithmetic to a geometric mean.
• No environmental variable is in the HDI. The Human Development Report 2020 introduced a separate Planetary pressures-adjusted HDI (PHDI), which discounts the HDI by per-capita CO2 emissions and per-capita material footprint. Inequality is likewise handled outside the HDI, by the Inequality-adjusted HDI.
• India's HDI standing is republished with every report and must always be quoted with the report year: in the Human Development Report 2021-22, released on 8 September 2022, India ranked 132 of 191 countries with an HDI value of 0.633 — the figure UPPSC itself tested in 2023.

• Assuming sustainability is inside the HDI. It is not — the UNDP addresses it through the separate Planetary pressures-adjusted HDI introduced in the 2020 Report.
• Naming the income indicator as GDP per capita. Since the 2010 Report it is Gross National Income per capita at PPP; UPSC 1997 tested the pre-2010 wording, so read the year of the question.
• Forgetting that the education dimension carries two indicators, so the HDI has three dimensions but four indicators — a favourite one-word trap in statement-based questions.

UPPSC asks it as an inclusion test — 'which indicator is NOT used' (2020) or a numbered statement set like this one — while UPSC prefers the precise indicator ('life expectancy, literacy and…', 1997) or the composition of a companion index such as the MPI. Either way the examinable unit is dimension, indicator and the index that owns it.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which index published by the UNDP discounts a country's Human Development Index by its per-capita carbon dioxide emissions and material footprint?

  • (a)Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index
  • (b)Gender Development Index
  • (c)Planetary pressures-adjusted Human Development Index
  • (d)Multidimensional Poverty Index

  Answer(c) Planetary pressures-adjusted Human Development Index — introduced in the Human Development Report 2020. The IHDI adjusts for inequality, the GDI compares female and male HDI values, and the MPI measures household deprivations in health, education and living standards.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  In the Human Development Index as computed since the 2010 Human Development Report, the standard-of-living dimension is measured by

  • (a)Gross Domestic Product per capita in US dollars
  • (b)Gross National Income per capita at purchasing power parity
  • (c)Per capita consumption expenditure
  • (d)Net National Product per capita at current prices

  Answer(b) Gross National Income per capita at purchasing power parity — the 2010 Report replaced GDP per capita (PPP) with GNI per capita (PPP) and also switched aggregation from an arithmetic to a geometric mean.