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THE NEW HUMAN DEVELOPMENT INDEX

TheHuman Development Index(HDI) is a statistical tool used to measure a country's overall achievement in its social and economic dimensions. The social and economic dimensions of a country are based on the health of people, their level of education attainment, and their standard of living.

The HDI was created to emphasize that people and their capabilities should be the ultimate criteria for assessing thedevelopmentof a country, not economic growth alone.

TheHDI(Human Development Index) is a way tomeasurewell-being within a country. ... TheHDIis a veryuseful measure of developmentbecause it includes economic and social indicators which reduce any anomalies. The PQLI is very similar to theHDIbut it includes infant mortality and it'smeasuredbetween 0 and 100.

Required:

1. Given the current rank of the Philippines at 107th in the New Human Development Index, what possible measures can be done to further raise the country's current standing?
2. The World Bank has produced and used income classifications to group countries.

The low, lower-middle, upper-middle, and high-income groups are each associated with an annually updated threshold level of Gross National Income (GNI) per capita, and the low and middle-income groups taken together are referred to in the World Bank (and elsewhere) as the "developing world."

The IMF, in the "World Economic Outlook (WEO)" currently classifies 37 countries as "Advanced Economies" and all others are considered "Emerging Market and Developing Economies" according to the WEO Statistical Annex. The institution notes that "this classification is not based on strict criteria, economic or otherwise" and that it's done in order to "facilitate analysis by providing a reasonably meaningful method of organizing data."

The UNDP's Human Development Index is a well-established multi-dimensional measure of wellbeing and groups countries into: "Very high", "High", "Medium" and "Low" levels of human development. The index draws on various indicators including those related to income, education and health.

The United Nations has no formal definition of developing countries, but still uses the term for monitoring purposes and classifies as many as 159 countries as developing. Under the UN's current classification, all of Europe and Northern America along with Japan, Australia and New Zealand are classified as developed regions, and all other regions are developing. The UN maintains a list of "Least Developed Countries" which are defined by accounting for GNI per capita as well as measures of human capital and economic vulnerability.

Question:

What significant biases and cultural overtones confront developing countries when they are tagged as such? Explain.