Human development is a process of enlarging people’s choices. Enlarging people’s choices is achieved by expanding human capabilities and functionings. At all levels of development the three essential capabilities for human development are for people to lead long and healthy lives, to be knowledgeable and to have access to the resources needed for a decent standard of living. If these basic capabilities are not achieved, many choices are simply not available and many opportunities remain inaccessible. But the realm of human development goes further: essential areas of choice, highly valued by people, range from political, economic and social opportunities for being creative and productive to enjoying self-respect, empowerment and a sense of belonging to a community.

Income is certainly one of the main means of expanding choices and well-being. But it is not the sum total of people’s lives. 

Current global concerns and human development

Here is how human development relates to current global concerns:

• Human rights. Human development leads to the realization of human rights—economic, social, cultural, civil and political. The human development perspective takes an integrated view of all human rights—not the narrow and exclusive focus on civil and political rights. It provides a framework in which advancing human development is commensurate with realizing human rights. 

The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms that "everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services … Everyone has the right … to education … to work … [and] to social security." Subsequent international human rights instruments reaffirmed people-centred development as a universal right—identifying as additional dimensions the right to security, participation, freedom of association, freedom from discrimination and exclusion from development. 

• Collective well-being. Individual rights, choices and opportunities cannot, however, be unlimited. One person’s freedom can constrain or violate the freedom of many others. As the reaction to the excessive individualism of the free market shows, there is a need for socially responsible forms of development. Individual and collective well-being are intertwined, and human development requires strong social cohesion and equitable distribution of the benefits of progress to avoid tension between the two. And the power of collective action is an essential driving force in the pursuit of human development.

• Equity. Concerns for equity take centre stage in the human development perspective. The notion of equity is most often applied to wealth or income. But human development emphasizes equity in basic capabilities and opportunities for all—equity in access to education, in health, in political rights. 

• Sustainability. Sustainability means meeting the needs of present generations without compromising the abilities and opportunities of future generations. It thus implies both intragenerational and intergenerational equity. Sustainability is an important dimension of human development. Human development is a process of enlarging people’s choices. But such enhancement must be for both present and future generations without sacrificing one for the other.

In the 1990s there have been major global debates on sustainable development (United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio, 1992) and for people-centred sustainable development (World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen, 1995). These have a common core, not to be missed, with human development. Human development is not a concept separate from sustainable development—but it can help to rescue "sustainable development" from the misconception that it involves only the environmental dimension of development.

All these approaches have emphasized the need for people-centred development, with concerns for human empowerment, participation, gender equality, equitable growth, poverty reduction and long-term sustainability.
 

Measuring human development

Human development index

Human Development Reports, since the first in 1990, have published the human development index (HDI) as a measure of human development. Recognize, however, that the concept of human development is much broader than the HDI. It is impossible to come up with a comprehensive measure—or even a comprehensive set of indicators—because many vital dimensions of human development are non-quantifiable. But a simple composite measure of human development can draw attention to the issues quite effectively. The HDI is not a substitute for the fuller treatment of the richness of the concerns of the human development perspective.

The HDI measures the overall achievements in a country in three basic dimensions of human development—longevity, knowledge and a decent standard of living. It is measured bylife expectancy, educational attainment (adult literacy and combined primary, secondary and tertiary enrolment) and adjusted income. 

Human poverty index

While the HDI measures overall progress in a country in achieving human development, the human poverty index (HPI) reflects the distribution of progress and measures the backlog of deprivations that still exists. The HPI measures deprivation in the same dimensions of basic human development as the HDI. 

HPI-1

The HPI-1 measures poverty in developing countries. The variables used are the percentage of people expected to die before age 40, the percentage of adults who are illiterate and deprivation in overall economic provisioning—public and private—reflected by the percentage of people without access to health services and safe water and the percentage of underweight children under five.

HPI-2

Introduced in this year’s Report, the HPI-2 measures human poverty in industrial countries. Because human deprivation varies with the social and economic conditions of a community, this separate index has been devised for industrial countries, drawing on the greater availability of data. It focuses on deprivation in the same three dimensions as HPI-1 and one additional one, social exclusion. The variables are the percentage of people likely to die before age 60, the percentage of people whose ability to read and write is far from adequate, the proportion of people with disposable incomes of less than 50% of the median and the proportion of long-term unemployed (12 months or more).

Gender-related development index

The gender-related development index (GDI) measures achievements in the same dimensions and variables as the HDI, but captures inequalities in achievement between women and men. It is simply the HDI adjusted downward for gender inequality. The greater the gender disparity in basic human development, the lower a country’s GDI compared with its HDI.

Gender empowerment measure

The gender empowerment measure (GEM) reveals whether women can take active part in economic and political life. It focuses on participation, measuring gender inequality in key areas of economic and political participation and decision-making. It tracks the percentages of women in parliament, among administrators and managers and among professional and technical workers—and women’s earned income share as a percentage of men’s. Differing from the GDI, it exposes inequality in opportunities in selected areas.