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QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ON HADI'S PAPER
on 3/12/02 3:51 PM, Hisham Zerriffi at hisham@andrew.cmu.edu wrote:
Dear Hadi,
I have been reading your paper for tomorrow's presentation with some
interest. It is a fascinating topic (and quite a methodological
challenge). There were a few things that struck me when reading the
paper that I thought I would pass along to you. If I am misunderstanding
anything or just way off-base, please let me know.
First, and I am not sure to what degree this is an issue, the index you
have proposed does not seem to account for cross-border water flows,
which is an interesting, but complicating factor. Thus, a country with
relatively high income and water availability, but with poor water
quality due to actions of a neighbour, might receive a low score on your
index despite a high level of development and actions to try to mitigate
against such cross-border pollution problems. This would of course
depend upon the relationship between water quality and malnutrition.
Again, I am not sure if this is actually a problem in any specific case,
but an interesting problem.
Second, it is not clear to me whether this index is applicable to the
industrialized world. A country with high gdp/capita, good water
availability and low childhood malnourishment should have a low residual
value (e.g. around zero or around 2.5 after the shift). This would place
it squarely in the middle of your development continuum. This seems to
be borne out by the fact that a quick glance of your table indicates
that OECD countries like the United States and the UK have development
indices around 2.5 while countries like Yemen or Armenia have indices
greater than 4. So, unless I am misunderstanding either your methods or
your results, this would indicate that those two countries have a higher
level of human development or, in other words, the US and UK have
substituted economic power for social organization and development.
While I have no doubt that social organization and development can go a
long way towards overcoming the limitations of lack of financial capital
in the industrializing context, I do not think that these are mutually
exclusive. this would indicate to me a bifurcation in the usability of
the index between industrialized and industrializing countries.
I hope these comments make sense and are useful.
By the way, forgive my ignorance, but has anyone else done the math
regarding life expectancies and centrally planned versus market
economies. I found that result quite interesting in its own right.
Take care,
Hisham.
************************************************************
Hisham Zerriffi
Ph.D. Student
Carnegie Mellon Electricity Industry Center
Dept. of Engineering and Public Policy
Baker Hall 129
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA 15213
hisham@andrew.cmu.edu
t: (412) 268-5609
f: (412) 268-3757
http://www.epp.cmu.edu
--On Tuesday, March 12, 2002 4:59 PM -0800 Hadi Dowlatabadi
hadi@sdri.ubc.ca> wrote:
Dear Hisham,
Thank you for the questions. They are very thoughtful and I hope to be
able to answer them to your satisfaction. Please ask again tomorrow, if
you think the answers here worth sharing (either because I am half mad or
because they are novel).
1) I think one aspect of development is managing relationships with
neighbours. I know that working with a crazy neighbour is an
insurmountable challenge, but I have not had time to work on that
particular issue. The underlying assumption is that there is good will in
the Universe of this study. Hence, if a neighbour pollutes your water,
your human development index SHOULD BE LOWER. This index is meant to be a
proxy for so many things HD. I hope that managing partnerships and
neighbourly relations are among these.
2) I WANT the index to show high HD vs. high resource capacity. If a
country has all the resource side sewn up, they do not need high HD to
solve their problems. If the UK had as good an HD as Armenia, they would
have even lower GI disturbances! So, I don't see a bifurcation, but an
acknowledgement that money IS NOT a substitute for the social and human
dimensions of development. Someone else is producing an index of
economic development. And, they have chosen to use GDP! I want this to
stand in contrast to that!
I hope these answers are satisfactory.
Hadi
Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2002 11:11:31 -0500
To: Hadi Dowlatabadi <hadi@sdri.ubc.ca>
Subject: Re: human development index
Dear Hadi,
I always thought the most novel ideas did come from those who are half
mad!
Seriously though, thank you for your answers. I understand a little
better
your objective now and I agree with point 1. A country with high HD
should
be able to use that to overcome differences with neighbors and negotiate a
solution.
I am still not sure about point 2, however (sorry to be a pain about
this).
I agree with you in principle that if the UK had as good an HD as Armenia
they should have lower GI distrubances, but it seems that your method
masks
that due to the high resource capacity of the UK. I guess what I am
trying
to say is that your index seems to measure more the ability to overcome
adverse circumstances of low GDP/capita or water availability
(particularly
the former). That is, it is a measure of adaptive social and
organizational capacity to low resource availability. Thus two countries
with the same low GDP/cap but with very different malnutrition rates would
get HD scores at either end of the scale. However, it is hard to see how
a
high gdp/cap country could get anything but a middle score. Furthermore,
it is not clear to me that a high level of social and organizational
ability in a high GDP/cap country could do more than a marginal
improvement
over what the high financial resources can provide. So, in my mind, it
comes back to the idea that, as you say, "If a country has all the
resource
side sewn up, they do not need high HD to solve their problems." While
they do not *need* high HD, that does not mean they do not have high HD,
which is what your index (at least as it is currently framed and
explained)
implies. Then again, I could still be missing something.
I look forward to your presentation.
Hisham.