Global distribution of HDI

Collaborators: Andrew Pascale, Paul Lant, Simon Smart and Chris Greig (University of Queensland, Australia)

This project estimates the global distribution of HDI, individual HDI components, emissions, energy use and income at the sub-national level (using income quintiles for disaggregation). There is a strong relationship between HDI and per capita energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. As developing countries progress, it is important to find pathways to development that are less greenhouse gas intensive. We could start by trying to find people who have achieved a high HDI with lower emissions than other countries in their HDI cohort. Given the significant inequality in HDI, income and other indicators at the national level, this analysis should be carried out at the most disaggregated subnational level possible.

This work builds on previous attempts to build subnational distributions of HDI, energy use and CO$_2$ emissions. This project constructs the first global distributions (disaggregated by country level income quintiles) of HDI, energy use and CO$_2$ emissions.

This project began with Andrew’s visit to National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore in April-August 2016.