Expanding of planetary pressures-adjusted human development index and its analysis with multi-criteria decision-making methods

Human development is defined as the ability of people to have a prosperous and quality life, to enjoy a long and healthy life, and to have access to the information necessary for personal development. Many calculation techniques have been developed to measure human development. One of these techniques is the Human Development Index developed by the United Nations Development Programme. The Human Development Index calculates the human development levels of countries using education, income and health indicators and enables comparisons to be made between countries. The income indicator of the index includes Gross National Product per capita; the health indicator includes life expectancy, and the education indicator includes average and expected years of schooling. The calculation of the Human Development Index helps to identify differences between countries, to determine the strengths and weaknesses of countries and which country needs to improve based on which indicator. However, there are many studies in the literature that the Human Development Index, which is calculated with these four sub-determinants and three indicators, does not fully reflect the level of development. Therefore, the first objective of this thesis is to expand the sub-determinants of education, income, and health indicators. For this purpose, based on the literature, the sub-determinants used in development level measurements in various studies were identified and the sub-determinants with statistically significant correlation with the Human Development Index is included in the study. Since today's levels of development that do not include climate change and environmental pollution do not appear sustainable, the United Nations Development Program has developed the Planetary Pressures-Adjusted Human Development Index, which incorporates the environmental factor into the level of development. The environmental indicator is measured by carbon dioxide emissions and material footprint per capita and added to the Human Development Index as an adjustment factor. Thus, the level of human development including the environmental factor can be found. The United Nations Development Program reports that the gap between the Human Development Index and the Planetary Pressures-Adjusted Human Development Index is higher in developed countries, while the gap is lower in low-development countries. Due to the view that the Human Development Index is insufficient in measuring the level of development, environmental indicators should also be increased, considering that the the Planetary Pressures-Adjusted Human Development Index consists of the Human Development Index, so environmental sub-determinants with statistically significant correlation with the Human Development Index is also identified and included in this study. Based on the question of how much the expanded environmental indicator affects the expanded Human Development Index and how this index will be affected by the changes, some regression analyses are also conducted in the study. For this purpose, we utilize classical regression, which provides estimation results according to the mean, and quantile regression analysis, which provides estimation results according to the median and can provide separate results for quantiles such as 0,25, 0,50 and 0,75. The same analyses are also tested for the impact of the expanded Human Development Index on the expanded environmental indicator. The methods used by the United Nations Development Programme in the calculation of the Human Development Index and the Planetary Pressures-Adjusted Human Development Index are used in this study for the calculation of the expanded Human Development Index and the expanded Planetary Pressures-Adjusted Human Development Index. In addition, the study also uses Multi-Criteria Decision Making methods to calculate the scores of the countries and to rank them. For this purpose, among the Multi-Criteria Decision Making methods that include many methods, ranking methods developed in the last decade in the literature were preferred. Since equal weighting is used in the United Nations Development Programme calculations, both equal weights and the weights calculated from the CRITIC method are considered in this study. In the study, the development level rankings of countries are made using MABAC, MAIRCA, MARCOS, SECA, DNMA and COCOSO methods. BORDA Counting method and COPELAND methods are used to combine the rankings. The study is conducted by including the data of 32 sub-determinants (criteria) for 130 countries. In the causality analysis, it is seen that there is a positive and significant relationship between the expanded Human Development Index and the expanded environmental indicator, and that the value of the expanded environmental indicator decreases as the development levels of countries increase, that is, from 0,25 to 0,75 quantile. The Extended Human Development Index also has a positive and significant effect on the expanded environmental indicator. As the value of the expanded environmental indicator increases, that is, at 0,25, 0,50 and 0,75 quantiles, there is a decrease in the value of the Expanded Human Development Index. In the rankings of the Multi-Criteria Decision Making methods using equal weighting and CRITIC-based weightings, the countries in the top five were Sweden, Norway, Austria, Finland, and Germany, while the countries in the bottom five were Central African Republic, Niger, Chad, Guinea, and Benin. Turkey ranked 52nd according to both weighting methods.