For a very long time, per capita GDP was used as the sole indicator of economic growth in most countries and regions in the world. In 1990, UNDP made a major breakthrough in the measurement of human development with the publication of its first Human Development Report (UNDP, 1990). The Human Development Index (HDI) was introduced on the assumption that economic growth, using traditional income-based measures such as GDP per capita, is not sufficient to reflect progress in human and social development. The Index comprises three main dimensions of wellbeing, namely, life expectancy at birth, educational attainment and real GDP per capita. UNDP has since refined some of these components and developed supplementary measures, such as the Gender-related Development Index and the Gender Empowerment Measure, which reflect the degree of gender equality and women’s empowerment in development across countries(10).

While the HDI has had much resonance in the development discourse over the years, some people believe that the HDI indicators are still too broad and that they fail to capture critical aspects of development, such as inequalities, vulnerability or environmental issues. Others have questioned the implications of arithmetically folding the three component indicators of the HDI into a single index, a method that presumably masks the trade-offs between the various components of the same index (Desai, 1991; McGillivray, 1991; Sen, 1993). However, the simplicity of the Index has been vital in positioning it as arguably the most popular development index globally.

At the Millennium Summit in 2000, global leaders made another breakthrough with the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals as a major global framework to help countries monitor and accelerate progress towards economic and social outcomes by the year 2015. Each of the eight internationally agreed goals includes a list of quantifiable and time-bound targets and indicators for monitoring progress in the areas of poverty (Goal 1), universal primary education (Goal 2), gender equality (Goal 3), child and maternal mortality, health and major diseases (Goals 4, 5 and 6), environmental sustainability (Goal 7) and global partnership for development (Goal 8). Since their adoption, the Goals have become one of the most important frameworks for development cooperation worldwide, catalysing efforts among all regions and countries and setting up the path for the development agenda beyond 2015.

A number of institutions and countries have developed and used a range of other tools and indicators to track specific social development outcomes:
• Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU, 2005) developed a “quality of life” index in 2005, based on a methodology that links the results of subjective life-satisfaction surveys to the objective determinants of the quality of life across 111 countries. The model comprises nine factors: health, material well-being, political stability and security, family relations, community life, climate change, job security, political freedom and gender equality - the first three being the most important according to their weights (EIU, 2006). 10 Both introduced by UNDP in 1995, these two measures are considered to be “gender-sensitive extensions of the HDI”. While the Genderrelated
Development Index takes into account existing gender gaps in the Human Development Index, the Gender Empowerment Measure
is based on estimates of women’s economic income, participation in high-paying positions and access to professional and parliamentary positions (Klasen, 2006).

• ILO decent work indicators (ILO, 2012) are based on 10 substantive elements of decent work, including equal opportunities at work, adequate earning, productive work, social security and social dialogue. Elements of social inclusion exist, but refer to the legal framework underpinning employment conditions and opportunities.

• OECD social indicators (OECD, 2011) have been recently developed to assess social progress among OECD countries in four broad policy areas, including self-sufficiency, equity, health status and social cohesion. The latter is particularly important in terms of exclusion, as it measures the extent to which people participate in their communities, or trust others. Equity includes the ability to access social services and economic opportunities, while selfsufficiency comprises indicators such as employment and student performance.

• European Union indicators of social inclusion (Atkinson and others, 2004) are a series of measures, clustered in five key dimensions, which measure poverty, inequality, employment, education and health outcomes among EU countries.

• Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI, 2010)11 was developed by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative and UNDP. It is a composite index based on a combination of income and non-income based measures, following an approach pioneered by Townsend (1979) and later by Sen (1985). It has been so far applied to 91 countries globally, and is being considered as one of the metrics in the application and monitoring of the new sustainable development goals and Agenda 2030. Two additional indices are particularly important, as they have been developed specifically for Africa:

• Ibrahim Index of African Governance (Mo Ibrahim, 2012) measures African national governance against 88 criteria, divided into four overarching categories: (
a) Safety and rule of law;
(b) Participation and human rights;
(c) Sustainable economic opportunity; and
(d) Human development. The index aims to capture the quality of services provided to citizens by African governments.

• African Gender Development Index was developed by ECA as a multidimensional and region-specific tool to assess the status and progress towards gender equality and women’s empowerment in Africa (ECA, 2012). The second phase of the Index – which was first piloted in 12 countries in 2009 – was carried out in 14 countries in 2012. The Index is based on a quantitative assessment of gender gaps in the social, economic and political spheres of life – through the Gender Status Index. The second component of the African Gender Development Index is the African Women’s Progress Scoreboard, which provides a qualitative evaluation of governments’ efforts to implement global and regional commitments affecting women and their rights. Despite the wide array of development indicators available, the approach used in the ASDI is novel, insofar as it seeks to capture the impacts of exclusion throughout the life cycle, assessing the effects of being excluded from early childhood to old age in six key dimensions of development. Its computation across time and for different subgroups, both at the national and sub-national levels, makes it possible to capture inequalities within and between countries and groups of population.

See more methodology here:

Neonatal mortality ,, Child Stunting ,, Literacy rate (15-24 years) ,, Youth unemployment (15-24 years old) ,, National-based poverty ,, Life expectancy at 60 ,, Aggregation of the Index ,, Review of social development and exclusion indices ,,

(10)Both introduced by UNDP in 1995, these two measures are considered to be “gender-sensitive extensions of the HDI”. While the Gender related Development Index takes into account existing gender gaps in the Human Development Index, the Gender Empowerment Measure is based on estimates of women’s economic income, participation in high-paying positions and access to professional and parliamentary positions (Klasen, 2006).

(11) http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/multidimensional-poverty-index-mpi.