Constructing a generalized model of the human development index

The human development index (HDI) has been a well-known yardstick of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to measure human development (HD) from a multi-dimensional perspective, since its introduction in the first Human Development Report (HDR) in 1990. Although there have been several modifications in the computation of this index, we suggest a new perspective in a multi-criteria decision-making framework in this paper. The new methodology addresses some of the limitations of the existing approach without violating the guidelines of the UNDP. As a first step, we revisit the concept of the HDI and then integrate the average shortfall factor with the HDI for the construction of GHDI--a generalized model of the HDI. Then we propose GHDI^R--a relative measure of the GHDI relative to a benchmark HD. This index is year-specific, and we determine it based on the goals of the human development indicators as fixed by the UNDP as well as the individual performance of all the countries under consideration for the year concerned. For this purpose, we employ a multi-criteria decision-making model using a two-step methodology. Initially, we develop a multi-objective model to create the benchmark HD. Next, we assess the GHDI^R with a multi-index ranking model. We implement these procedures for the countries based on their empirical data on human development indicators as presented in the HDR (2014) and compare the HDI with the GHDI and GHDI^R.