The DOI matches its Crossref record; 19 of the 19 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
A reassessment of the human development index via data envelopment analysis
Abstract
To consider different aspects of life when measuring human development, the United Nations Development Program introduced the Human Development Index (HDI). The HDI is a composite index of socioeconomic indicators that reflect three major dimensions of human development: longevity, knowledge and standard of living. In this paper, the assessment of the HDI is reconsidered in the light of data envelopment analysis (DEA). Instead of a simple rank of the countries, human development is benchmarked on the basis of empirical observations of best practice countries. First, on the same line as HDI, we develop a DEA-like model to assess the relative performance of the countries in human development. Then we extend our calculations with a post-DEA model to derive global estimates of a new development index by using common weights for the socioeconomic indicators. Finally, we introduce the transformation paradigm in the assessment of human development. We develop a DEA model to estimate the relative efficiency of the countries in converting income to knowledge and life opportunities.
Overview
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
In the citing paper
“Executing this technique with the basic constraints (e.g.see Despotis 2005a, or Cherchye et al. 2007) will probably result in all the weighting capacity being assigned to the indicator with the highest value (e.g.see Hermans et al. 2008Hermans et al. , pp. 1340Hermans et al. -1341)).”
From On the Methodological Framework of Composite Indices: A Review of the Issues of Weighting, Aggregation, and Robustness (2019) · cites this paper as Despotis 2005a
In the citing paper
“According to Mahlberg andObersteiner (2001, in Despotis 2005a, p. 970), the first authors to propose the use of DEA in the HDI context, this approach constitutes a more realistic application, because each country is 'benchmarked against best practice countries'.”
From On the Methodological Framework of Composite Indices: A Review of the Issues of Weighting, Aggregation, and Robustness (2019) · cites this paper as Despotis 2005a
In the citing paper
“For this reason, a number of techniques exist in the literature that arrive at a common weighting scheme (e.g.see, among others, Despotis 2005a; Hatefi and Torabi 2010;Kao 2010;Morais and Camanho 2011;Sun et al. 2013).”
From On the Methodological Framework of Composite Indices: A Review of the Issues of Weighting, Aggregation, and Robustness (2019) · cites this paper as Despotis 2005a
Citations
Cites
Measuring the efficiency of decision making units
Charnes, A., Cooper, W. W., & Rhodes, E. (1978) · European Journal of Operational Research · doi:10.1016/0377-2217(78)90138-8 · Cited by 29,767
Some Models for Estimating Technical and Scale Inefficiencies in Data Envelopment Analysis
Banker, R. D., Charnes, A., & Cooper, W. W. (1984) · Management Science · doi:10.1287/mnsc.30.9.1078 · Cited by 16,729
Cooper, W. W., Seiford, L. M., & Tone, K. (2000) · doi:10.1007/b109347 · Cited by 1,079
The human development index: a critical review
Sagar, A. D., & Najam, A. (1998) · Ecological Economics · doi:10.1016/s0921-8009(97)00168-7 · Cited by 824
Singer, C. A. (2001) · Journal of Government Information · doi:10.1016/s1352-0237(02)00387-8 · Cited by 561
Indicators of development: The search for a basic needs yardstick
Hicks, N., & Streeten, P. (1979) · World Development · doi:10.1016/0305-750x(79)90093-7 · Cited by 546
The human development index and sustainability — a constructive proposal
Neumayer, E. (2001) · Ecological Economics · doi:10.1016/s0921-8009(01)00201-4 · Cited by 367
The Human Development Index: "Handle with Care"
Kelley, A. C. (1991) · Population and Development Review · doi:10.2307/1973733 · Cited by 305
Desai, M. (1991) · European Economic Review · doi:10.1016/0014-2921(91)90136-7 · Cited by 284
A Modified Human Development Index
Noorbakhsh, F. (1998) · World Development · doi:10.1016/s0305-750x(97)10063-8 · Cited by 268
Research works printed but not linked: 2
- Streeten P, 1981, First Things First: Meeting Basic Needs in Developing Countries
- Mahlberg B, 2001, Remeasuring the HDI by data envelopment analysis
Cited by
Greco, S., Ishizaka, A., Tasiou, M., & Torrisi, G. (2019) · Social Indicators Research · doi:10.1007/s11205-017-1832-9 · Cited by 1,325
“For this reason, a number of techniques exist in the literature that arrive at a common weighting scheme (e.g. see, among others, Despotis 2005a; Hatefi and Torabi 2010; Kao 2010; Morais and Camanho 2011; Sun et al.”
BackgroundMethodInfluentialWeights in Multidimensional Indices of Wellbeing: An Overview
Decancq, K., & Lugo, M. A. (2013) · Econometric Reviews · doi:10.1080/07474938.2012.690641 · Cited by 850
An Introduction to ‘Benefit of the Doubt’ Composite Indicators
Cherchye, L., Moesen, W., Rogge, N., & Puyenbroeck, T. V. (2007) · Social Indicators Research · doi:10.1007/s11205-006-9029-7 · Cited by 728
A mathematical programming approach to constructing composite indicators
Zhou, P., Ang, B. W., & Poh, K. L. (2007) · Ecological Economics · doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2006.12.020 · Cited by 325
Zhou, P., Ang, B. W., & Zhou, D. Q. (2010) · Social Indicators Research · doi:10.1007/s11205-009-9472-3 · Cited by 240
Metadata
- Authors
- Despotis, D. K.
- Affiliations
- University of Piraeus (GR)
- Corresponding author
- Despotis, D K
- ORCID
- Despotis, D K
- Venue
- Journal of the Operational Research Society
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2005-08
- Volume
- 56
- Issue
- 8
- Pages
- 969-980
- ISSN
- 0160-5682 (ISSN-L)
- 1476-9360
- OpenAlex
- W2052928398
- Cited by
- 363
- References
- 19
- Citations by year
- 2026: 9 · 2025: 16 · 2024: 13 · 2023: 22 · 2022: 13 · 2021: 24 · 2020: 26 · 2019: 34 · 2018: 28 · 2017: 20 · 2016: 21 · 2015: 16 · 2014: 27 · 2013: 10 · 2012: 18
- FWCI
- 10.59
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Journal of the Operational Research Society (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Management Science and Operations Research › Efficiency Analysis Using DEA
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Income, Poverty, and Inequality
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Quality of Life Measurement
- Keywords
- Human Development Index, data envelopment analysis, human development measurement, composite index, benchmarking, common set of weights, life chances, relative efficiency
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: A reassessment of the human development index via data envelopment analysis. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1057/palgrave.jors.2601927
- The paper
- Despotis, D. K. (2005). A reassessment of the human development index via data envelopment analysis. Journal of the Operational Research Society. https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.jors.2601927
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.