Inter–country inequality in human development indicators

Abstract

This paper compares the degree of inter–country inequality in three measures of human development (the Human Development Index (HDI), the Gender–Related Development Index (GDI) and the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM)) to those in real income as measured by real GDP per capita in PPP$ (RY) and adjusted real GDP per capita in PPP$ (ARY). To this end, three inequality measures with convenient decomposition properties are used. The results show that inter–country inequalities in RY and ARY are greater than those in all the three human development indicators, irrespective of the inequality measure used. Furthermore, GDI and GEM both exhibit higher degrees of inter–country inequality than does HDI. In addition, GEM exhibits the highest level of inter–country inequality among the three human development indicators, irrespective of the inequality measure used.