1 - I think AIDS and the number of armed conflicts in Many parts of Africa explain for a great part the flatness of Africa's HDI curve. The life expectancy at birth is a key factor of the HDI, and child mortality has been dramatically increasing during the last 20 years.
2 - I have no answer to your question, but a look at the detailed analysis in the UNDP report (read page 263 to 273) shows that there is no tight correlation between GDP per capita and HDI. Compared to another country, a country may have a higher GDP per capita and a lower HDI. That shows that policies count.
3 - If I wanted to be provocative, I would answer that for many people in countries other than the OECD and Sub-Saharan Africa, what is more important is the fact that they have managed to survive. "Ne te courbe que pour aimer..." René Char
Also, your chart
Inequality in China:
shows well that not only within a region (e.g. East Asia, Latin America, etc.) there must be enormous HDI diversity, but within a country as well, and no doubt within regions within countries as well. Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.
Here is a map showing the evolution of the inequality index since WWII. For developing countries, either it has remained very high, like in Mexico and Brazil, or it has been dramatically increasing, like in China and India. For developed countries, whereas most of the European countries, Canada and Australia remained at a relatively low level, the UK and the United States have seen a dramatic increase in inequalities.
Furthermore, if you look at the list of Gini Index by country, you will notice that the Gini Index of the United States has increased from 40,8 to 45 between 2000 and 2004... "Ne te courbe que pour aimer..." René Char
For all the vast improvement it represents over GDP as a measure of the well-being of a country, HDI seems to suffer one of GDP's critical defects: it erases the often extreme differences in "texture" within a country.
Can a measure based on HDI and Gini be formulated such that overall human development for a country takes into consideration the level of inequality within that country.
Determining median income is hard enough for a country, I gather, so determining a "median HDI" would be unfeasible, right?
HDI/Gini must be far too simplistic to be a useful measure for anything, but something along those lines: Where even if HDI is very high in a country, if the Gini index is also very high, then that country is not doing as great as the HDI itself would indicate. Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.
Of course, by HDI/Gini I meant HDI ÷ Gini.
Again, no doubt too simplistic, but the point is to find some formula that takes advantage of the notion of human development, but modulates it by taking into account the level of inequality. Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.
I think you may be quite right:
War Deaths 2002 Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.
