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Jesus Christ, this is literally peak Hacker News. You realize you are saying what is the equivalent of "Big O notation is unnecessary for Computer Science".

The default HDI formula devised by the UN is a mix of GNI per Capita ADJUSTED TO THE PRICE LEVEL OF THE COUNTRY; expected years of schooling of children at school-entry age and mean years of schooling of the adult population; and life expectancy.

Literally in any Developmental Econ 101 class HDI is pointed to as the primary metric to compare regions.

Of course there are valid criticisms with weightages in HDI, but no one and literally no Economist or Policymaker worth their salt has straight ignored it.

GDP PPP per Capita and Gini are critically important as well, and are factored into modified HDI indexes as well, for example Inequality HDIs which add the GINI, and the post-tax Gini Ineqaulity HDI because the naive Gini formula didn't take taxation and income transfers into account.

2 comments

>Literally in any Developmental Econ 101 class HDI is pointed to as the primary metric to compare regions.

Doesn't stop it from being useless.

>literally no Economist or Policymaker worth their salt has straight ignored it.

They should. No Economist of Policymaker has ignored the GDP either, but that's another bona fide BS metric. The job of the majority of economists and policymakers working for governments and related organizations is more as political careerists and representatives of power interests - and their predictions and results have a horrible track record.

Economists actually doing serious research look down on such metrics.

> Jesus Christ, this is literally peak Hacker News. You realize you are saying what is the equivalent of "Big O notation is unnecessary for Computer Science".

Sorry but it absolutely isn’t. Pointedly, the HDI is a composite indicator weirdly mixing together criteria with a formula which doesn’t make sense. It’s a total ass pull from the UNDP and shouldn’t be taken seriously.

> ADJUSTED TO THE PRICE LEVEL OF THE COUNTRY;

No need to all caps. As stated the issue of the HDI is that it’s a non sensical composite aggregating together correlated variables using arbitrary weights, not that it doesn’t adjust for price level.

> Literally in any Developmental Econ 101 class HDI is pointed to as the primary metric to compare regions. Of course there are valid criticisms with weightages in HDI, but no one and literally no Economist or Policymaker worth their salt has straight ignored it.

I have a degree in economics and I have yet to meet someone taking the HDI seriously.

I did appreciate your comment about ”valid criticisms”. It did remind of one of my friend mentioning his “little issue” with alcohol. I will concede that the HDI is a composite indicator for which there are valid criticisms regarding variables selection and weights and by that I mean that it is a garbage indicator.

> GDP PPP per Capita and Gini are critically important as well

Yes, it helps that they actually make sense.

Equivalently, one could also look at proper metrics for the rest of the HDI components if they wanted but most of them are tightly correlated to GDP PPP anyway.