ABSTRACT
What is the Human Development Index? The Human Development Report of the UNDP defines it as the statistical measure that indicates the degree to which the experience of development in various countries is contributing to enlarging ‘human capabilities and functionings’ (UNDP 1998). The underlying assumption is that socio-economic development involves a large and expanding spectrum of factors that are not purely economic in nature as the neoclassical orientation to the study of resource allocation would make us believe. On the contrary, development is the result of a spectrum of interactions among factors ranging from economic to ethical, social and institutional ones, all of which must be brought together in a cogent way within a systems approach to the study of the interactions that ensue as these various factors feedback and interrelate with each other through the universal perspective of a general system.
