Inequality decomposition and human development

Abstract

The human development index, which takes into account achievements in health, educa­ tion, and income, is considered a good measure of the social attainments of a country. The distribution of human development in the world is irnbalanced and the degree of cohesion is low. This inequality ha.s varied during recent years. In this paper we present evidence that improvements in the cohesion of human development are mostly attributed to educa­ tion, whereas health and income have made poor contributions. To do this we exploit the multiplicative structure of the human development index and decomposition of the Theil inequality index. Keywords: World, human development, inequality, inequality decomposition, Theil index