The Human Development Index (HDI) developed in 1990 by Mahbub-ul-Haq added two dimensions, life expectancy and education, to income to come up with a country indicator which was not completely hung up on economic growth. UNDP has been publishing the index regularly since. In 2014, the Social Progress Imperative went further by completely excluding economic variables to derive the Social Progress Index (SPI), an index composed of fifty four indicators to assess the social and environmental performance of countries. Both indicators rely on work done by Amartya Sen.

I have prepared a visualization that compares the two indicators: http://huzaifazoom.com/hdi_vs_spi/

The emphasis on GDP as the primary focus of well-being is simply wrong-headed as it leads to ecological suicide. In 1990, when the HDI was formulated, climate change awareness was incipient. Today, it is upon us. That fundamentally changes things, and forces us to take the environment into account.

A fairer indicator would take into account ecological plunder, military interventions and wealth extraction outside of one’s borders that underpin the economic and social growth of a country. The way things are stacked up, that is not going to make it into mainstream discourse any time soon.

The fact that Cuba is rated quite high on the HDI (45) and low on the SPI (84) shows that the SPI has to be improved upon. A friend explained this difference to me by saying, “since SPI is influenced by Amartya Sen as well as Douglas North – who won the Nobel prize for his work and emphasis on historicity, formation,  analyzing change and evolution of Institutions – factors like providing opportunity, choice and freedom (partially linked with solid institutional setting) if compared in Cuba with say, for example, Sweden then it does explain Cuba’s low ranking on SPI.”

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