Wednesday 15 October 2008

Poverty on papers and Jordan

There are many ways to measure poverty, there is whats called Measure I and Measure II ; Measure I examins how inequality and vulnerability can be used to measure poverty. Measuring Poverty II talks about two common indices used to measure poverty, UN Human Development Index (HDI) and the Human Poverty Index (HPI)

The HDI for Jordan is 0.773, which gives the country a rank of 86th out of 177 countries for 2005 data reported in 2007/2008 report.

Countries on the same level of HDI as Jordan can have very different levels of income. Of the components of the HDI, only income and gross enrolment are somewhat responsive to short term policy changes. For that reason, it is important to examine changes in the human development index over time. but I don't know about now, like so much happened on the political and economic realm since 2005 in Jordan.

The HDI measures the average progress of a country in human development. The Human Poverty Index for developing countries (HPI-1), focuses on the proportion of people below a threshold level in the same dimensions of human development as the human development index - living a long and healthy life, having access to education, and a decent standard of living. By looking beyond income deprivation, the HPI-1 represents a multi-dimensional alternative to the $1 a day poverty measure.

The HPI-1 value of 6.9 for Jordan, ranks 11th among 108 developing countries for which the index has been calculated.

The HPI-1 measures severe deprivation in health by the proportion of people who are not expected to survive age 40. Education is measured by the adult illiteracy rate. And a decent standard of living is measured by the unweighted average of people without access to an improved water source and the proportion of children under age 5 who are underweight for their age. [source]

still I don't think this measure is practical enough, its a great indicator but it doesn't advice anything about improving measures, because its responsive to policies but doesn't tell how to fix it. rankings are ok, but there is a lot of room for improvements especially in camps and rural cities. and the truth is, we didnt see the data past 2007, so reality now is different.

http://blogactionday.org/js/b12a95cbc4a0decdba903d1041446d37a6275cf9

2 comments:

a different perspective said...

Thanks for gathering the data. This is the first time I hear about the Human Development Index, it does sound right to me that the HDI in Jordan is high compared to the GDP. Our literacy rate, education attainment and life expectancy are quite high for a 3rd world country with widespread poverty like Jordan.

Tala said...

agreed