THE QUESTION OF USING HUMAN DEVELOPMENT INDEX FOR DEVELOPING COUNTRIES CLASSIFICATION AND NEW METHODS OF CALCULATION WITH SPECIAL REGARD TO ENVIRONMENT

VERNER V., PAČESNÝ J., JENÍČEK V.

Abstract
Gross domestic product (GDP) is nowadays the most common tool for measuring economic development and for international classification of countries worldwide (Ranis et al, 2004; Jeníček et al., 2005). The paper presents some main disadvantages of GDP and shows, that Human development index (HDI) is more eligible for reason, that it includes both economic (represented by above mentioned GDP) and social part of human development. For that reason, the paper brings the newest values of HDI, which were counted (for the year 2005) according to the UNDP methodology, but which are independent from UNDP sources to compare 192 independent economics in the world, when United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) brings annually data for circa 175 countries only and new bounds for groups of countries were layout. Finally, the new methods of measuring the HDI components (DALE - new method of calculation life expectancy and GPI - new view on impact of economic development on the environment (Hamilton et al., 1997)) were taken into consideration and the HDI values were calculated.

Key words:
socio-economic indicators; human developing index; classification of developing countries; economic impact on environment.

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