174 Human Poverty

Definition

The human poverty indices are an attempt by the United Nations Development Programme to get a broad measure of the degree of poverty in territories, using the statistics that are available.

The main measure is the Human Poverty Index 1 (HPI-1). It creates a score for each territory based on its performance against four theoretical worst case scenarios. These are: no probability at birth of surviving to 40 years old; 100% adult illiteracy rate; 0% access to an improved water source; and 100% of children underweight for their age. That would score 1000. The score would be zero where none of those things happened. The worst actual case is Burkina Faso with a score of 660.

The 30 territories in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) use the Human Poverty Index 2 (HPI-2). Here the worst case scenarios used are: probability at birth of surviving to the age of 60; adults lacking literacy skills; the proportion of the population living on below 50% of the mean equivalised disposable income; and the rate of long term unemployment. We consider that dividing the HPI-2 score by 10 makes it roughly equal to the HPI-1 score, thus the two scores can be applied to populations and then mapped together.

If we were to map any of the individual factors, we would take the score and multiply it by the relevant population to give a figure for the territory, and then size the territory in proportion to that figure. Here we take the HPI-1 divided by 1000, or HPI-2 divided by 10000, multiplied by the total population because the index aims to give a score for the total population. The theoretical worst case for any territory is therefore its total population, or 10% of the total population for the OECD territories. Ideal would be zero. The world mean is 20% of its population and the actual worst case is 66% of its population.

Worldwide this gives a total of 1262 million. Only 10 million of this is allocated to the top twenty territories of the Human Development Index, and half of that to the United States.

Data sources

See technical notes for Human Development, 173.

Click here to view detailed data source references

The quote used for this poster is from the economist Angus Maddison, published under the title ‘Research Objectives and Results 1952-2002.’ Maddison’s work has been of great value to the worldmapper project, beyond providing us with the quote used here. His work on historical demography and economy provides the basic data for maps about these topics. The quote was accessed in July 2006, from the website below:

http://www.ggdc.net/Maddison/content.shtml

Excel sheets

Below is an explanation of each of the columns in the excel file:

Column A = Unique numerical territory (see 001).

Column B = Region and territory names (see 001).

Column C = Region code (see 001).

Column D = The ISO 3 code, or ISO ALPHA-3 (see 001).

Column E = Derived Human Poverty Index (on a scale of 0-1000) applied to population in millions, in 2002. This is calculated by multiplying the derived human poverty index on a scale of 0-1000 (Column F) by the tot al population in millions (Column G), divided by 1000. (E = F * G / 1000).

Column F = Derived Human Poverty Index, in 2002, on a scale of 0-1000 (1000 as no poverty). This is the Human Poverty Index-1 (0-1000) obtained from the source data when available and not zero. Otherwise it is the Human Poverty Index-2 divided by 10 where available. If there is still no data then the regional average is assumed.

Column G = Population in millions, 2002. See technical notes 002, Total Population.