Abstract
The Human Development Index
(HDI) uses GDP per capita to measure “command over resources,” which implicitly
makes the strong value judgment that inequality and insecurity do not matter. This
paper presents revised estimates of the Index of Economic Well-Being (IEWB) for
the United States, the U.K., Canada, Australia, Germany, Norway and Sweden for
the period 1980 to 2001 and demonstrates that replacing an index of the log per
capita incomes with our IEWB as the “command over resources” component in the
Human Development Index (HDI) affects the level and trend of the HDI, even
among affluent nations. Because the IEWB recognizes four dimensions of command
over resources (Current effective per capita Consumption flows, Net societal
Accumulation of stocks of productive resources, Income Distribution and
Economic Security), its use has a particularly large impact where underlying
trends in these components diverge (e.g. the