Notes
1 For a brief history of such attempt see, for example, Noorbakhsh (1998a), (1998b) and Ward (1999).
2 The debate on the concept of development, however, continued, see for example Sen (1988; 1990); Streeten
(1994); Srinivasan (1994) and Haq (1995).
3
Amongst the early attempts we may refer to the levels of living index (Drewnowski et al. 1966) and development
index (McGranahan et al. 1972). Another measure, developed later, excluded the income component altogether.
The physical quality of life index (PQLI) had three social components: infant mortality rate, life expectancy and
adult literacy (Morris 1979). For one such attempt in the 80s see McGranahan et al 1985.
4 For Streeten 1995 see the introductory chapter in Haq 1995.
5 According to S. Fakuda-Parr, K. Haq and R. Jolly (2000) in recent years 260 national and regional human
development reports in 120 countries have been published.
6 A number of papers presented in the First Global Forum on Human Development, 29-31 July 1999, New York,
United Nations Development Programme emphasised this point; in particular see Streeten (2000), Sen (2000) and
Ranis and Stewart (2000).
7 “Yes, it is crucial to have economic growth.. .But the real issues as we go forward , are the issues of equity and
social justice.” As quoted by S. Fakuda-Parr, K. Haq and R. Jolly (2000) from a recent speech by the President of
the World Bank.
8 G. Ranis and F. Stewart (2000) term these two kinds of poverty as private income poverty and social income
poverty. The same concept is regarded by the US Bureau of Census and the Luxembourg Income Studies as a
comprehensive definition of income to include the total consumption of population (see Ward 1999).
9 There are a number of issues involved in the selection of indicators, including their relevance, relative importance
and possible overlaps. As mentioned in the text such issues are beyond the scope of this article.
10 Non-availability of data at regional level was a limiting factor in this selection.
11 Consider a vector (Xij - Xj) containing deviation from mean scores for indicator j. The length of this vector
is given by the square root of the inner product of the vector. That is:
IXy-- XJ=[( Xv- X1 ),( Xj- X1 )]x = N∑< Xj- Xj )2 Q
From the definition of variance we have:
n
∑ ( Xij- XjV
σ2 = i=1
n
Or:
n
Σ (Xij -XJ )2 = "σσ
i =1
Bearing in mind that the variance of a standardised indicator is equal to 1, from the first and third equations we will
have:
!Xi- Xj I=n12
That is, the length of a standardised indicator is equal to the square root of the number of regions which remains the
same for all indicators. Hence the length of the standardised indicator vectors are equal.
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