Economic science/ 16.Macroeconomics

Kapelyuk S.D., senior lecturer

Siberian University of Consumer Cooperatives, Russia

Pyatina E.A., student

Siberian Institute – the branch of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, Russia

Human development trends in CIS countries

 

Human development is one of the basic concepts in economics nowadays. The human development is a process of enlarging people’s choices [2].The most popular and widely-used composite indicator of human development is undoubtedly the human development index [1].

The human development index (HDI) is a summary measure of three indicators: longevity, educational attainment and income. Since 2010, the human development index for country k is calculated by the geometric mean:

                             (1)

The longevity index (Jõ1) is normalized life expectancy of birth. The education index (Jõ2) is based on two indicators: mean years of schooling and expected years of schooling. The income index (Jõ3) is constructed on the basis of the gross national income (GNI) per capita [3, pp. 263–264].

The main principles of the new HDI methodology are reflecting opportunity freedoms, diminishing returns from all of the components of the human development index and neglect of inequality [5].

The vast amount of literature is devoted to assess the availability of the Human development index (HDI) to reflect the well-being. But the group of authors including the director of UNDP’s Human Development Report Office, Jeni Klugman, pointed out that assessing of changes in the HDI is even more important than assessing of levels in particular year [7].  The changes in HDI in relevant country usually compared with changes in HDI in other countries to assess the progress in human development in relevant country. For analysis of human development trends we chose the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries, the large group of transitional countries.

The human development trends in the transitional countries are of interest for tremendous variations in key economic variables [8]. It is useful to determine how these variations influenced on the changes in the well-being. We use the data from the last Human Development Report [4]. Our analysis focuses on the comparison of the HDI values and ranks in 2000 and 2011. The retrospective calculation of the 2000 data of the HDI in the 2011 Report allows us to solve the problem of data comparability. We chose 2000 as a basis for comparison due to the data availability.   The results of comparison are presented in Table.

 

Table. The human development index in the CIS countries (2000–2011)

Country

2000

2011

Change

HDI

rank

HDI

rank

HDI

rank

 Armenia

0,643

77

0,716

86

+0,073

-9

 Azerbaijan

–

–

0,700

91

–

–

 Belarus

–

–

0,756

65

–

–

 Kazakhstan

0,657

73

0,745

68

+0,088

+5

 Kyrgyzstan

0,577

98

0,615

126

+0,038

-28

 Moldova

0,586

92

0,649

111

+0,063

-19

 Russia

0,691

61

0,755

66

+0,064

-5

 Tajikistan

0,527

105

0,607

127

+0,080

-22

 Turkmenistan

–

–

0,686

102

–

–

 Ukraine

0,669

67

0,729

76

+0,060

-9

 Uzbekistan

–

–

0,641

115

–

–

 

We could evaluate human development trends only for seven CIS countries because there are no data for Azerbaijan, Belarus, Turkmenistan and Ukraine based on the new methodology. There is a significant positive improvement in the HDI values in all selected countries so we determine the positive trend in human development. Several countries decreased their ranks but it could be explained by the extension of the list of countries in 2011. Across countries, Kazakhstan demonstrated the best improvement of the human development through the decade.

In the 2010 Report, many of the CIS countries significantly improved their position in global ranking. The country has relatively good policy if its position in the HDI ranking improves. But we found no significant improvement in the CIS countries policies because the changes in ranking are explained by the transition to the new version of the HDI [6].

References:

1.                 Blancard S., Hoarau J-F. Optimizing the new formulation of the United Nations’ human development index: An empirical view from data envelopment analysis // Economics Bulletin. – 2011. – ¹ 1. – Pp. 989–1003.

2.                 Human Development Report 1990. – New York: United Nations Development Programme, 1990 [Electronic resource]. – Access mode: http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/hdr_1990_en_indicators1.pdf

3.                 Human Development Report 2010. – New York: United Nations Development Programme, 2010 [Electronic resource]. – Access mode: http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/HDR_2010_EN_Complete.pdf

4.                 Human Development Report 2011. – New York: United Nations Development Programme, 2011 [Electronic resource]. – Access mode: http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/HDR_2011_EN_Complete.pdf

5.                 Kapelyuk S. The main principles of the new Human development index // Materiály VIII mezinárodní vědecko - praktická konference  «Dny vědy – 2012». – Díl 22. Ekonomické vědy. – Praha: Publishing House «Education and Science», 2012. – Pp. 72–74.

6.                 Kapelyuk Z., Kapelyuk S. Influence of Changes in Calculating the Human Development Index on the CIS Countries Ranking // Kazan Science. – 2012. – ¹ 3. – Pp. 115–118.

7.                 Klugman J., Rodriguez F., Choi H. The HDI 2010: new controversies, old critiques // Journal of Economic Inequality. – 2011. – ¹ 9. – Pp. 241–288.

8.                 Svejnar J. Labor markets in the transitional Central and East European Economies // Handbook of Labor Economics / Ed. by Ashenfelter O., Card D. – Vol. III. – Elsevier Science, 1999. – Pp. 2809–2857.