Introduction

The Human Development Index (HDI) is a summary measure of average achievement in key dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, being knowledgeable, and having a decent standard of living. The HDI is the geometric mean of normalized indices for each of the three dimensions.

The health dimension is assessed by life expectancy at birth, the education dimension is measured by the mean of years of schooling for adults aged 25 years and more and expected years of schooling for children of school entering age. The standard of living dimension is measured by gross national income per capita. 

The HDI was created to emphasize that people and their capabilities should be the ultimate criteria for assessing the development of a country, not economic growth alone. The HDI can also be used to question national policy choices, asking how two countries with the same level of GNI per capita can end up with different human development outcomes. These contrasts can stimulate debate about government policy priorities (https://hdr.undp.org/en/content/human-development-index-hdi)

The dataset used for this report uses the HDI report for the year 2015 and compares 188 countries on the basis of their human development across the three dimensions of health, education, and standard of living.

Inspiration

Before starting with the visualization, I researched the existing work that has been done on this topic. Two of them that I found insightful were:

Our world in data – Human Development Index (HDI) by Max Roser

In this article, I enjoyed the way a complex topic was broken down into understandable segments. The article focused on the individual components of the HDI and tracked each country’s growth across a historical period which I found interesting. I liked how the color scheme was based on the continents and size was used to indicate the quantitative factors.

Human Development Data Visualizations

This blog had a repository of visualizations done on the topic of HDI and I was able to analyze how to represent the same data source in a wide variety of ways.

Materials & Process

Step 1 – Finding the Dataset

After browsing through datasets on multiple topics, I found a dataset on Human Development Report 2015 provided by the United Nations Development Program on Kaggle.com. This dataset was extensive and ranked 188 countries on the basis of the HDI rank. It also tracked each country’s growth across three parameters which were Life expectancy at birth, Gross National Income per capita, and Mean years of education for adults over the age of 25 years.

Step 2 – Creating the Visualization

After finalizing my dataset I imported the data to Tableau. It is a visual analytics platform that allows people to use data to represent complex datasets. The data was analyzed to understand the best way of representing the information. After trying multiple configurations of showing each parameter, seven visualizations were created which were then compiled in a dashboard.

The color palette used for visualization consisted of a spectrum between two colors. The first one was blue which was used consistently to indicate high development and performance across the parameters. The second one was yellow which was used to indicate lower rank and performance across criteria. In my first attempt, I had used blue-red which were both very strong colors. I felt that the red being used for low-ranked countries was affecting how the data was being perceived in an extreme way. So I decided to swap it with yellow to make it look more neutral and balanced.

Results

While creating the visualization I wanted to start with a broad overview, delve deeper into the key factors and then identify the correlation between each factor and their HDI rank.

1. Providing a global overview of the HDI ranks

This graph shows the global HDI ranks of 188 countries on a geographical map. It can be observed where the concentration of the highest and lowest-ranked countries lies. Moreover, any one individual country can also be identified and its rank can be found.

2. Focusing on the inequity between the ten highest and ten lowest ranked countries on the three HDI parameters

This graph shows the inequality across the three parameters of HDI between the top ten and lowest ten ranked countries. The purpose of this visualization was to accentuate the disparity that exists between these two sets of countries. It can be observed how the GNI per capita for the lowest ten countries combined is still lesser than the GNI per capita for any of the countries from the top ten categories. The Mean year of education falls from 13.10 years to 1.40 from the highest to the lowest country on this scale. The Life expectancy also drops to 53 years from 83 years between the two ends of the spectrum.

3. Identifying the correlation between the three HDI parameters and the Human Development Index

This segment of the visualization identifies the correlation between each individual HDI parameter and the HDI for all 188 countries. It can be observed that there is a positive correlation between each individual factor and the overall HDI of a country.

Reflection

Data Visualization is very interesting as it allows a broad audience of people to understand a massive volume of data in a much faster and consumable format. I enjoyed working on this project as it allowed me to not only understand and process a wide dataset but also represent it and identify patterns. The most challenging aspect of the project for me was understanding the best form of representation for each data format and the colors that I would use for the visualizations.

In terms of future scope I would like to expand this project and historically chart the data for not just a year but across a decade or perhaps more. That would allow me to observe the change in each country’s development and identify more patterns and see if they are consistent with historical trends.

References

hdrdata-blog. (n.d.). HDR Data Blog. Retrieved March 3, 2022, from https://hdrdata-blog.tumblr.com

Human Development Index (HDI) | Human Development Reports. (n.d.). UNDP. Retrieved March 3, 2022, from https://hdr.undp.org/en/content/human-development-index-hdi

Human Development Report 2015. (2017, January 25). Kaggle. Retrieved March 3, 2022, from https://www.kaggle.com/undp/human-development?select=human_development.csv

Roser, M. (2014, July 25). Human Development Index (HDI). Our World in Data. Retrieved March 3, 2022, from https://ourworldindata.org/human-development-index