Abstract
This paper builds a Perceived Human Development Index (PHDI) by assembling HDI components, namely indicators on income, health and education on a subjective version using the Gallup World Poll microdata. We study how perceptions on individual’s satisfaction are related to their objective counterparts. We also emphasize impacts of income and age providing insights about the transmission mechanism of key social policy ingredients into perceptions. The so-called PHDI provides a complementary subjective reference to the HDI. Finally, we study the relative importance given to income vis-à-vis health and education using life satisfaction. This helps to reveal HDI components “true” relative weights.
Study financed and carried out in the framework of the Latin American and Caribbean Research Network of the Inter-American Development Bank that also provided access to the Gallup World Poll used here. I would like to thank the excellent support provided by Luisa Carvalhaes, Samanta Reis, Carol Bastos, Gabriel Buchmann, Ana Andari, Rodrigo Ramiro and Tiago Bonomo. I would also like to thank the comments provided by Jere Behrman, Carol Graham, Leonardo Gasparini, Ravi Kambur, Eduardo Lora and Mariano Rojas. The usual disclaimer applies.
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Notes
- 1.
The “My World” single question survey orders 16 policy priorities of the population with a view to defining the new Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for the post-2015 period, when the term of the current goals ends. In the Brazilian case, the questionnaire in My World was incorporated in its questionnaires by IPEA. IPEA was awarded in 2013 by the United Nations (UN) for giving the main contribution among countries of Latin America and the Caribbean to the “My World” research. The results show that there is an inversion on the order of the first two priorities, with health appearing in 85.5 % of the questionnaires and education in 81.8 % of them. The third component is related to income.In any case, the three most prominent elements both in Brazil and in the world represent the three components of the HDI.
- 2.
An advantage of the international data set used is to allow to test the relationship between inner and outer related aspects of life at individual level and country levels.
- 3.
The reader can analyze similar results for the each of the main questions related to PHDI for LAC and the questions that are available for the world in Appendix.
- 4.
Subjective well-being, happiness and satisfaction can be used interchangeably and is the scientific term in psychology for an individual’s evaluation of her experience about life as a whole.
- 5.
See Richard Easterlin (1974), Blanchflower and Oswald (2000), Diener and Oishi (2000), and Kenny (1999)
- 6.
- 7.
As Deaton (2007, p 30) poses “One surprising finding in figure 3, the close linear relationship between average life satisfaction and the logarithm of income per head”.
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Appendix
Appendix
(a–c) Gross correlation between aggregated PHDI and respective HDI component
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Neri, M. (2016). A Perceived Human Development Index. In: Rojas, M. (eds) Handbook of Happiness Research in Latin America. International Handbooks of Quality-of-Life. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-7203-7_31
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