Volume 6, Issue 24 (4-2007)                   refahj 2007, 6(24): 283-304 | Back to browse issues page

PMCID: 27591695

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Abstract:   (5171 Views)

Objectives: In the recent century, most of the countries are increasingly developing, so it is necessary to know the development condition of country in order to compete internationally, and to access the development goals. Then in this paper we try to know development condition of Iran. Before 1970s income index has been used for the comparison of the performance of nations in social and economic areas. But this index doesn't consist of many aspects of human life. Looking for some corrections on the distortions imposed by the income index, the human development index (HDI) was created by economists Mahbub ul Haq and Amartya Son in 1990 to aggregate two new dimensions to the problem: longevity and educational level of countries. Method: In this paper, we analyze the human development condition of Iran by computing HDI for all the provinces in years 1996 and 2001. The human development index (HDI) focuses on three measurable dimensions of human development: living a long and health life, being educated and having a decent standard of living. For each dimension, have been selected a suitable indicator. Adult literacy and combined cnrolment ratlos have been selected as indicators for the knowledge dimension, life expectancy at birth as the indicator for a healthy life and an adjusted GDP as the indicator for the standard of living. For each dimension, the value of the index is computed on a scale of 0-1 where 0 corresponds to the minimum, and 1 to the maximum assigned value for the corresponding indicator. The overall HDI is then determined as the arithmetic average of the three indices. The HDI clearly illustrates the distinction between income and human well-being. By measuring average achievements in health, education and income, HDI can give a more complete picture of the state of a country's development than can incomes alone. Findings: The findings show that the human development condition of Iran have been improved in 2001 in comparison with 1996 and received from 0.71 to 0.72. But this improvement is very low. In the human development dimensions, training index stands upper, but income index stands lower than the others. The analyses of the human development dimensions in the provinces also show that in the most of them this index has been improved. The most important factors of HDI improvement are the progresses that have happened in the education and sanitation facilities in 2001. Then Iran had put stop forward to progress the goals of human development in five years and to more suitable atmosphere for improving health and education level. According to the study, HDI of Khuzestan province had the highest growth rate, due to the highest growth rate of income index, In the studying years Tehran had more HDI, on the contrary, Sistan and Baluchestan province had lower HDI. HPI, which focuses on the proportion of people below a threshold level in basic dimensions of human development, reduced from 0.21 in 1996 to 0.15 in 2001. Then human poverty in Iran had been improved. Results: The results show that in spite of the progress in the Iran's human development, there are still many differences in the human development of the provinces because of unequally educational, sanitary and monetary facilities and HDI has not only increased in some provinces but also decreased.

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Type of Study: orginal |
Received: 2015/09/11 | Accepted: 2015/09/11 | Published: 2015/09/11

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