This paper argues that the future of composite indices of development such as the Human Development Index depends on how successfully they become operational and this is more likely to be possible at the country level for a variety of reasons. With this in mind the paper proposes a method and a...

This paper surveys the various composite well-being indices that have been inter-country assessments over the last 40 or so years, including the well known Human Development Index (HDI). A number of issues are considered, including the choice of components, component weights, scale equivalence,...

The concept of convergence is extended to the human development index. Evidence of weak absolute convergence is found over 1975-2002. The results are robust and verified by various conditional -convergence models and also supported by the evidence of weak -convergence. Population weighted...