Leandro Prados de la Escosura, "Human Development and the Path to Freedom: 1870 to the Present" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
New Books in World Affairs
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The HDI Report Is Very Pessimistic
The message of the HDI report is very pessimistic, but the numbers are very optimistic. And this is because there is this spurious correlation. You're using very crude variables such as life expectancy and birth of years of education to proxy something that incorporates quality like a healthy and long life satisfactory life or access to knowledge. I found for the recent past that increases in quantity and increases in quantity are highly correlated. So when people live longer, that means that the health of every age cohort improves. More use of education implied that better people are better educated. Children and adolescents are better educated than before.
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