Regional Development in Advanced Countries: a Within-Country Application of the Human Development Index for Austria

• Authors: Lukas Schrott , Martin Gächter , Engelbert Theurl
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Since its implementation in 1990, the human development index (HDI), the flagship indicator of multidimensional development, has attracted a great deal of attention and critics in academic, political and media circles. It initiated a new stage in the discussion of appropriate indicators to measure socioeconomic development. Until now, the vast majority of empirical work using the HDI concept has taken a cross-country perspective. The main aim of this paper is the application of the HDI at the sub-country level in small, highly developed and socioeconomically homogenous countries. For this undertaking we use a slightly modified version of the HDI, called the regional development index (RDI). For the components of the RDI - life expectancy, education and standard of living - we use recent cross section information for Austria at the level of districts. There exists considerable heterogeneity across districts in the RDI and its components. Our Theil-decomposition reveals that the overwhelming part of the observed heterogeneity is based on differences within provinces (96 percent), although the differences in life expectancy between the provinces explain a substantial part of the overall heterogeneity in this indicator (54 percent).

Keywords

EN

Human Development Index; Regional Development; Decomposition; Austria

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: DANUBE: Law and Economics Review
• Year: 2015
• Volume: 6
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 1-23

Dates

published

2015-03-01

online

2015-04-10

Contributors

author

Lukas Schrott

• University of Applied Sciences Kufstein, Andreas Hofer-Straße 7, 6330 Kufstein, Austria

author

Martin Gächter

• University of Innsbruck, Department of Economics and Statistics, Austria

author

Engelbert Theurl

• University of Innsbruck, Department of Economics and Statistics,Austria

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Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/danb-2015-0001