Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 150
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 151
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Warning (512): Unable to emit headers. Headers sent in file=/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php line=853 [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 48]
Warning (2): Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php:853) [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 148]
Warning (2): Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php:853) [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 181]
LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Why the Modi Govt Shouldn't be so Quick To Dismiss World Bank's Human Capital Index -Diego Maiorano

Why the Modi Govt Shouldn't be so Quick To Dismiss World Bank's Human Capital Index -Diego Maiorano

Share this article Share this article
published Published on Oct 15, 2018   modified Modified on Oct 15, 2018
-TheWire.in

The finance ministry can continue to quibble, but the stark fact is that decades of underspending in education and health may result in India wasting its demographic dividend.


On October 11, the World Bank launched the latest of its country rankings: the Human Capital Index (HCI).

The objective of the index is to show how low education and health outcomes – or human capital – impact productivity, growth and prosperity. The ranking of 157 countries is also a way to “name and shame” governments that do not prioritise investments in human capital. India, unsurprisingly given its notoriously poor commitment on both health and education, is amongst the countries that have little to celebrate and much to improve.

The HCI has three main components, which, taken together, compose the overall score. One, survival rates, measured as children’s probability of seeing their fifth birthday. Two, education, both in terms of the average number of years that children can expect to go to school and in terms of how much they are actually learning.

Three, health, as measured by the proportion of children who are not malnourished and the probability of a 15-year old to live through her entire working age and celebrate her 60th birthday.

The overall score for India is 0.44, whereas the highest country in the index (Singapore) has a score of 0.88 and the lowest (Chad) has a score of 0.29. What these numbers mean is that, in the case of India, a child born today will become 44% as productive an adult as she could be, had she lived in the country of Utopia where all children enjoy full education and full health (where the score would be 1).

India is ranked 115 out of 157 countries in the index, below the world average and below the average for South Asia. Quite remarkably, much poorer neighbouring countries like Bangladesh and Nepal score better than India. Even compared with its peers in terms of GDP per capita, India’s score is lower than the average of middle-lower income countries.

This should not come as surprise, as India has a long and problematic history of virtually no investment in human capital during the colonial period, followed by greater but still very low commitment to human capital formation by successive Indian governments. India’s combined public expenditure on health and education, for instance, (4.71% of the GDP) is nearly half of that of East Asian countries or Latin America. China, on the contrary, which invested heavily in health and education after the Maoist revolution, despite being as poor as (if not poorer than) India, today ranks 46 in the HCI index.

Please click here to read more.

TheWire.in, 14 October, 2018, https://thewire.in/government/narendra-modi-govt-world-bank-human-capital-index


Related Articles

 

Write Comments

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

Video Archives

Archives

share on Facebook
Twitter
RSS
Feedback
Read Later

Contact Form

Please enter security code
      Close