Human Development Index for Indian States.

Dr. Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera in 2012 computed Human Development Index for 20 Major Indian states using the then available latest data. HDI that they developed was combined with its variant that addressed the status of Children in the 0-5 years age group specifically. Their findings were published in Economic and Political Weekly.

1. SPECIAL ARTICLE
Economic & Political Weekly EPW september 29, 2012 vol xlv iI no 39 47
5 Update
By way of a quick update, Tables 2 and 3 present a simple HDI
for Indian states, using more recent data. The component indi-
cators are given in Table 2, with 2005 as the reference year
(this is the latest year for which comprehensive data are avail-
able). Since the results are sensitive to the choice of indicators
used to capture education, health and economic poverty (the
three standard components of HDI-type indexes), we use three
indicators for each aspect of human development, and give
them equal weight. The normalisation and aggregation formu-
las are the same as before, with nine indicators instead of three.
In Table 3, the HDI is calculated in two ways: (1) with 2005 as
the reference year, using the data given in Table 2; (2) using
the latest available data for each indicator. Both ways, the
results are much the same. We tried many variants of this HDI,
but the basic patterns are fairly robust, as long as education,
health and standard of living get roughly equal weights.
To interpret the results, it is useful to remember that the HDI
is essentially an average (over different indicators) of the state’s
position between the top and bottom states on a linear scale
(see Section 1). It would take value 1 for a state that does best
in terms of every indicator, and 0 for a state that does worst in
terms of every indicator. The impressive value of 0.970 for
Kerala reflects the fact that Kerala does best among all major
states in terms of six of the nine indicators, and is very close to
best for the remaining three. Dire warnings about Kerala’s
approach to development being “unsustainable”, heard at
regular intervals during the last 20 years, are yet to come true.
The highest-HDI states are Kerala, Himachal Pradesh and
Tamil Nadu (in that order). An earlier ranking of states based
Table 2: Selected Indicators for Major States (2005)
Education-Related Indicators Health-Related Indicators Poverty-Related Indicators
Female Literacy, Proportion of Proportion of Under Five Proportion of Proportion of Proportion of Proportion of Median Per
Age 15-49, 2005-06 Children Aged 6-14 Children Aged Mortality Rate, Young Children Adult Women Population below Population in Capita Income,
(%) Attending School, 8-11 Who Pass a 2005-06 Fully Immunised, with Low BMI, the Poverty Line, India’s Lowest 2004-05
2005-06 (%) Simple Reading (Per Thousand) 2005-06 (%) 2005-06 (%) 2004-05 (%) Wealth Quintile, (Rs/Year)
Test, 2004-05 (%) 2005-06 (%)
Andhra Pradesh 49.6 81.4 50 63.2 46.0 33.5 29.6 10.8 6,241
Assam 63.0 84.4 72 85.0 31.4 36.5 34.4 19.8 6,000
Bihar 37.0 62.2 44 84.8 32.8 45.1 54.5 28.2 3,530
Chhattisgarh 44.9 81.1 61 90.3 48.7 43.4 49.4 39.6 5,306
Gujarat 63.8 83.0 64 60.9 45.2 36.3 31.6 7.2 6,300
Haryana 60.4 84.1 65 52.3 65.3 31.3 24.1 4.1 9,443
Himachal Pradesh 79.5 96.2 83 41.5 74.2 29.9 22.9 1.2 9,942
Jammu & Kashmir 53.9 87.8 40 51.2 66.7 24.6 13.1 2.8 8,699
Jharkhand 37.1 71.7 59 93.0 34.2 43.0 45.3 49.6 4,833
Karnataka 59.7 84.0 53 54.7 55.0 35.5 33.3 10.8 5,964
Kerala 93.0 97.7 82 16.3 75.3 18.0 19.6 1.0 9,987
Madhya Pradesh 44.4 89.1 46 94.2 40.3 41.7 48.6 36.9 4,125
Maharashtra 70.3 87.2 66 46.7 58.8 36.2 38.2 10.9 7,975
a
Orissa 52.2 77.5 58 90.6 51.8 41.4 57.2 39.5 3,450
Punjab 68.7 85.3 66 52.0 60.1 18.9 20.9 1.4 9,125
Rajasthan 36.2 75.4 55 85.4 26.5 36.7 34.4 24.2 6,260
Tamil Nadu 69.4 93.9 79 35.5 80.9 28.4 29.4 10.6 7,000
Uttar Pradesh 44.8 77.2 39 96.4 23.0 36.0 40.9 25.3 4,300
Uttarakhand 64.6 90.4 63 56.8 60.0 30.0 32.7 6 6,857
West Bengal 58.8 79.7 51 59.6 64.3 39.1 34.2 25.2 6,250
India 55.1 79.6 54 74.3 43.5 35.6 37.2 20 5,999
a Including Goa.
Sources: Figures with 2005-06 as reference year are from the third National Family Health Survey (International Institute for Population Sciences 2007, and state reports for school
attendance); poverty estimates 2004-05 from the Tendulkar Committee Report (as reprinted in Planning Commission 2012); reading proficiency and median per capita income from the
India Human Development Survey (Desai et al 2010).
Table 3: Human Development Index for Indian States
Using 2005 as Reference Year
a
Using Latest Available Data
b
Kerala 0.970 0.980
Himachal Pradesh 0.846 0.837
Tamil Nadu 0.749 0.761
Punjab 0.742 0.734
Haryana 0.670 0.640
Jammu & Kashmir 0.655 0.626
Uttarakhand 0.612 0.640
c
Maharashtra 0.601 0.627
Gujarat 0.520 0.526
Karnataka 0.500 0.507
Andhra Pradesh 0.458 0.466
West Bengal 0.446 0.483
Assam 0.441 0.402
India 0.400 0.410
Rajasthan 0.301 0.318
Chhattisgarh 0.271 0.290
Madhya Pradesh 0.230 0.252
Orissa 0.229 0.268
Uttar Pradesh 0.212 0.214
Jharkhand 0.170 0.218
Bihar 0.106 0.108
a Based on National Family Health Survey (NFHS) data for 2005-06, National Sample Survey
(NSS) data for 2004-05, and India Human Development Survey (IHDS) data for 2004-05.
See Table 2.
b Reference year: 2011 for female literacy (age 7+, from Census of India 2011);
2008 for child mortality (from Government of India, 2008); 2009-10 for official poverty
estimates (from Planning Commission 2012); 2005 for other indicators – as in the
first column.
c In the absence of a child mortality rate estimate for Uttarakhand in 2008, the child
mortality rate of Himachal Pradesh has been used (both states have similar infant
mortality rates).
Sources: See Table 2. The index is an unweighted average of normalised values for each of
the 9 indicators presented in Table 2, using the normalisation rule mentioned in the text.
The states are ranked in decreasing order of HDI for 2005.