GDP vs HDI

Does progress really matter if we can't measure it? How can a country or humanity itself understand and know they are doing better than in the past if they can't measure if there are no true standards to measure such a quantity? Sure, previously there were mentions of ways to do this but these ways aren't true standards done with no bias and by trustworthy agencies. Progress could lead to a more positive country meaning a more happy country thus correlate with a country's happiness. But what of the standards? Someone might consider progress to be able to have huge amounts of material wealth while another may consider it to be having good health care and a college degree to further advance themselves in their lives. There are several ways in which these both can be measured and taken into account as talked about previously. But the most commonly used standards by experts is GDP and HDI. But what do these standards measure and mean for the happiness of a country?

GDP

GDP at its most basic is a measurement to tell how well a country's economy is doing and in turn what is their standard of living. Or as Investopedia puts it "GDP is commonly used as an indicator of the economic health of a country, as well as to gauge a country's standard of living." So one could presume that if an economy is doing well than that the country's happiness level should be higher as their standard of living is likely higher. But many critics disagree with this as they say it can't measure well-being as GDP is mainly intended to measure a nation's productivity which could be considered unrelated to a nation's happiness or progress level in some cases. And also GDP doesn't take into account a nation's medical condition, or education standards which HDI does.

HDI

HDI meanwhile in my opinion is a slight better standard for measuring progress as it not only takes GDP into account it also factors in life expectancy, literacy rate, school enrollment rate, and a decent standard of living, which is figured out by considering GDP. Or as Investopedia defines it "A tool developed by the United Nations to measure and rank countries' levels of social and economic development based on four criteria: Life expectancy at birth, mean years of schooling, expected years of schooling and gross national income per capita." Sure HDI has its downfalls as the calculations of life expectancy are calculated by comparing it to other countries who may have been founded a much longer time ago, or not factoring in the "moral and spiritual factors of living" such as not deducting countries which have a high suicide rate such as China or Japan.

Surprising Similar!?!

While GDP and HDI may seem different with HDI being considered more advanced than GDP, which it technically is, GDP and HDI according to Hans Rosling are actually quite similar and tell similar results.

In his own words: "There is today a very strong correlation between rising GDP/capita. If you exclude 6 countries on the right side of the strong correlation that have higher GDP/capita than HDI due to oil or diamonds; and if you exclude 6 former Soviet Republics with collapsed economy but still high literacy rate on the left side of the correlation; you will find that the GDP/capita and the value on Human Development Index follow each other very closely from the worst-off country Congo to the best-off country Norway. The reason seems to be that nations today are surprisingly capable in converting the available national income (measured as GDP/capita) into a longer lifespan for the people (measured as Life expectancy at birth) and into access to education (measured by mean of years of schooling for adults aged 25 years and expected years of schooling for children of school entering age). But the reason may also be that nations today are very good at converting improved health and education into economic growth. Most probably the causality goes in both directions.

In conclusions: If you want better health and education fix economic growth. If you want faster economic growth provide better education and health service. GDP/capita appears to be as good a measure of progress of nations as are HDI"-Hans Rosling.

Or as a summary GDP and HDI relate very strongly except for a few countries because with economic growth, measured by GDP, comes better education and health service, measured by HDI, as the government and the people have more money to spend on education and health care. Vice versa, with better education and health service comes faster economic growth, because now people are healthier meaning more likely to work and as they have better education they are more likely to further themselves in their field earning more money.

So really GDP and HDI technically can be interchanged and lead to similar data results and this can be seen by the comparison the graphs below for a group of select countries. Keep in mind HDI is still more accurate in my opinion as HDI considers GDP and other factors. Also the data is only similar meaning not the same so there will be some variation between the two but in general the "ranking" of the countries shouldn't change by much when comparing GDP vs HDI with other factors.

Graphs

Countries Chosen: China, Mexico, Nigeria, Russia and Singapore

***Note: The Plotted Points in the Graphs are the same size as to let the user compare the graphs easily and also if you want more information you can click the larger image link or the interactive graph link***

Life Expectancy (X-Axis)

GDP vs. Life Expectancy HDI vs. Life Expectancy