Human Development and HDI

The concept of human development was defined as a process of expanding people's choices so that they have the capabilities and opportunities to be what they want to be.

Unlike the perspective of economic growth, which sees the well-being of a society only through the resources or income it can generate, the human development approach seeks to look directly at people, their opportunities and capabilities. Income is important, but as one of the means of development and not as its end. It is a change of perspective: with human development, the focus is transferred from economic growth, or income, to human beings.

What is HDI?

The Human Development Index (HDI) is a summary measure of long-term progress in three basic dimensions of human development: income, education and health. The objective of creating the HDI was to offer a counterpoint to another widely used indicator, the Product Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita, which only considers the economic dimension of development. Created by Mahbub ul Haq with the collaboration of Indian economist Amartya Sen, winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics, the HDI is intended to be a general and synthetic measure that, despite broadening the perspective on human development, does not encompass or exhaust all development aspects.

What is RDH?

The Human Development Report (HDR) is recognized by the United Nations as an independent intellectual exercise and an important tool for raising awareness about human development around the world. With its wealth of data and innovative approach to measuring development, the RDH has a great impact on reflections on the topic around the world. The RDHs include the Human Development Index and present data and analyzes relevant to the global agenda and address issues and public policies that place people at the center of strategies to face development challenges. The UNDP annually publishes a Global RDH, with cross-cutting themes of international interest, as well as calculating the HDI for most countries in the world. In addition to it, hundreds of national RDHs are periodically published, including those from Brazil. To date, UNDP Brazil has published three Reports and two national Human Development Atlases.

More information about the HDIs.