Measurements Of Economic Development: Does Human Development Index Matter In The Context Of Nigeria

The economic development literature is replete with measures that capture the operationalisation of economic development, one of which is the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The GDP is the most widely used metric for assessing an economy’s performance, or economic development, as it measures the market value of all final goods and services produced within a country in a given period. Currently, there is the argument that GDP or its ally, the Gross National Product (GNP), is not an adequate measure of economic development because it does not measure progress in the wellbeing of people. Measures and measurements of economic development go beyond the mere expressions provided by the GDP, GNP or any other variants used in the ensuing model of GDP or GNP. The relatively current index, the Human Development Index (HDI), has been strongly expressed as a measure of economic development; but there are some limitations when the HDI is applied to all economic situations. It is against this backdrop that this paper proposes a HDI that will accommodate the peculiarities of Nigeria, given the poor level of education and health facilities in the country. To this end, the paper proposes modified variants of HDI, namely the standard of living and the education indexes which should be reviewed to reflect the aforementioned and identified level of development in the country. Beyond this, a comparable level of economic development with global best practices should spur up concerted and sincere efforts among stakeholders in building and developing human capacity through adequate educational funding across all levels, as well as providing good health-care facilities that will ensure human longevity and improved living standards of the people.