Abstract
The Human Development Index (HDI) is one of the most internationally recognized development indices. Unlike the conventional economic indices, HDI considers not only economic but also educational and health aspects. HDI is often used as a “ranking index” to assess the level of development of a nation. However, the theoretical foundation of HDI, Human Development Theory, does not aim at proposing a “ranking index;” rather, it provides a perspective for comprehensive evaluation to clarify the problems that each nation needs to tackle for its national development.
Therefore, reflecting the original idea of Human Development Theory, this paper tries to develop a new method of development evaluation to assess the “balance” of development of each nation, rather than “ranking” them. 141 nations which have the necessary data for statistical analyses are sampled, and Principal Component Analysis is used to decompose each of the 141 HDIs according to education, health and economic factors. The decomposed factors draw a chart of “development balance” and these 141 charts are categorized and utilized for a more comprehensive evaluation of development.
