This document discusses and analyzes several indices used to measure countries' economic development and human well-being: GDP, HDI, SPI, and HPI. It provides an overview of each index and where Mexico ranks. The document concludes that while all the indices are useful, HDI is the most complete because it considers factors like life expectancy, education, and standard of living that truly define a country's quality of life. Improving according to HDI indices would likely improve rankings in other areas as well. Collaboration across society is needed for countries to continuously develop and provide higher standards of living.

1. Instituto Tecnológico de
Saltillo
Sustainable Development
Economics and Human Well Being
Alejandro Javier Mejia Valdes
14050931

2. Index
1………………………… Economicsand Human Well Being Summary
1-5……………………… World Indices
6………………………… Analyzing the indices
6………………………… Conclusion
7………………………… Bibliography

3. Economics and Human well being
This two aspects can be named as the most important aspects to take into consideration to measure a
country’s growth and success, however they are really different and most of the times they do not grow hand
by hand at the same time.
Because you may have grown as a country with a great economy but maybe by contaminating and polluting
most of the areas inside your boundaries and that brings a lot of health problems to the people living in the
affected areas.
Governments need to work along with the citizens because improving quality of life in a country is a job for
everyone that takes part of it.
Some indices are used as a way of trying to improve countries quality of life by growing in a controlled way in
every aspect at the same time and not only in one aspect at a time.
Gross Domestic Product(GDP)
It is a way of measure a country’s development analyzing the total value of everything produced by all the
people and companies in the country. It doesn't matter if they are citizens or foreign-owned companies. If they
are located within the country's boundaries, the government counts their production as GDP.
It is calculated with a simple formula: Personal Consumption Expenditures plus Business Investment
plus Government spending plus (Exports minus Imports), (C + I + G + (X-M)).
There is different types of GDP:
Nominal GDP: This is the raw measurement that includes price increases.
Real GDP: Analyzed by using a price deflator. It tells you how much prices have changed since a base year,
to compare economic output from one year to another.
Growth Rate: Is the percentage increase in GDP from quarter to quarter. It tells you exactly how fast a
country's economy is growing. Most countries use real GDP to remove the effect of inflation.
GDP per Capita: This is the best way to compare GDP between countries. Some countries have enormous
economic outputs because they have so many people, and this helps to get a more accurate picture. This
divides gross domestic product by the number of residents. It’s a good measure of the country's standard of
living.
Mexico is actually in the 15th
position of this ranking, we have here in Mexico a large amount of industries and
every year more and more developed countries are bringing their companies to Mexico and that is helping a lot
in having more jobs and improving the economy in the country.

4. Human DevelopmentIndex (HDI)
As we saw earlier in this course, HDI is used to measure a country’s growth. HDI index values range from 0 to
1. Those countries with an HDI of over 0.800 are part of the High Human Development group. Those between
0.500 and 0.800, are considered as Medium Human Development countries. And, those that fall below 0.500
are the Low Human Development countries. It is considered to be better than the GDP because HDI also
considers several aspects that define human well-being like life expectancy, educational attainment and decent
standard of living.
The HDI, however, has its share of critics. Some point out that it is difficult to chart a country’s growth using
HDI because a country’s rank for a certain year is calculated based on, for example, the life expectancy or
adult literacy rate of the other nations in the list. There are also others who say that HDI does not capture the
moral and spiritual aspects of human development. For example, the HDI does not penalize countries with a
high suicide rate.
Mexico is actually in the 70th
position of this ranking, in this list we can see that Mexico has a lot work to put on
when we talk about health and studies, people with low economic resources usually cannot be treated as they
needed when they are sick because of a regular health system that needs improvement and a lot of people
can only study until the 9th
grade or even worst there is also a lot of people that does not have any studies.
SocialProgressIndex
Social progress is defined as the capacity of a society to meet the basic human needs of its citizens, establish
the building blocks that allow citizens and communities to enhance and sustain the quality of their lives, and
create the conditions for all individuals to reach their full potential.
Social progress index measures the extent to which countries provide for the social and environmental needs
of their citizens, by observing social and environmental outcomes directly rather than the economic factors.
The social and environmental factors include health, shelter, sanitation, equality, inclusion, sustainability,
personal freedom and safety.
Mexico is actually in the 48th
position of this ranking, in this ranking we can see similar things that Mexico has
missing as we did in the HDI, unfortunately there is a lot of homeless people or people that does not have a
decent place to live in, but over the years Mexico’s economy has been improving thanks to other countries
investment and that I think is a way to start improving the economy and because of that creating more
opportunities for people that need them.

5. Happy Planet Index
The Happy Planet Index measures sustainable wellbeing for all. It tells us how well nations are doing at
achieving long, happy, sustainable lives.
Wealthy Western countries, often seen as the standard of success, do not rank highly on the Happy Planet
Index. Instead, several countries in Latin America and the Asia Pacific region lead the way by achieving high
life expectancy and wellbeing with much smaller Ecological Footprints.
It combines four elements to show how efficiently residents of different countries are using environmental
resources to lead long, happy lives:
Wellbeing: How satisfied the residents of each country say they feel with life overall, on a scale from zero to
ten, based on data collected as part of the Gallup World Poll.
Life expectancy: The average number of years a person is expected to live in each country based on data
collected by the United Nations.
Inequality of outcomes: The inequalities between people within a country, in terms of how long they live,
and how happy they feel, based on the distribution in each country’s life expectancy and wellbeing data. It is
expressed as a percentage.
Ecological Footprint: The average impact that each resident of a country places on the environment, based
on data prepared by the Global Footprint Network. Ecological Footprint is expressed using a standardized unit,
the global hectares per person.
Mexico is currently in the 2nd
position of this ranking, when we talk about happiness I am glad to hear that
Mexico is the top countries of the list. Although we need to improve a lot in several aspects of life it is good to
hear that we are really good at an aspect that maybe for some people it is not important but I think that being
happy can help a human being be more confident and improve their way of making things and that is a good
way to start making things better.

6. Analyzing the indices
Each of the indices previously explained had helped countries by giving them information to considerate in
what can be done better to help people live long, healthy and safe lives.
All of them can be really useful, also because they measure different aspects so that the right people can use
them all to complement and have a complete research.
But some of them do not take into consideration all of the aspects that define really the growth of a country as
we can see GDP is mostly focused in the economics of a country, SPI measures what countries give to their
people in a social and environmental aspect, HPI measures what people would think its not important but it
really is because being happy as a human being will assure you a better quality in your life and HDI takes into
consideration several aspects that define a country.
In my opinion HDI is the most complete index of them all. It provides information that in my opinion is what a
country really needs to improve to get their people a better quality of life. It may have missed some information
to take into consideration but if a country starts improving in HDI aspects I think it will get better in the other
indices at the same time.
Conclusion
So in conclusion keeping the world balanced between what we humans want and our needs with the Earth
needs and cares is really important if we want to keep living like we are used to. This is a contribution that
needs to be made by everyone in every country.
The indices revised in this document, work alike, making your country develop more and more every year is
also a job that needs to be done by everyone involved in the country’s area, it is important because I think
everyone wants to live a good quality and full life and leave a better life to your children than the one you lived
and that is achievable if everyone in the country work together trying to make it better.

7. Bibliography
https://www.thebalance.com/what-is-gdp-definition-of-gross-domestic-product-3306038
http://www.nationmaster.com/blog/?p=45
https://www.isc.hbs.edu/research-areas/Pages/social-progress-index.aspx
http://happyplanetindex.org/about/#how