Tuesday, March 28, 2017

How far behind China is India?




Using the United Nations Human Development Index 2016 and associated data (available here), one can construct the following table, showing India's 2015 value and the years bracketing the period when China crossed that value.  So, for example, both China and India have young but  aging populations; India's median age of population in 2015 was 26.6 years; China had that value sometime between 1990-1995 (the data is given at five year intervals).

Human Development Index (HDI) is yearly, and so one can say that India's 2015 value of 0.624 was crossed by China sometime between 2003 and 2004.

One can see that India, per capita income-wise is about 10 years behind China, but in HDI is 13-14 years behind.  In some health and education indicators India is 25 years behind China.  By these measures, India is not getting increases in human welfare commensurate with its increasing income.

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Index India 2015 When China
Human Development Index (HDI) 0.624 2003-2004
Demography-Median Age (years) 26.6 1990-1995
Education-Adult Literacy Rate (% ages 15 and older) 72.10% before 1990
Education-Expected years of schooling (years) 11.7 2006-2007
Education-Mean years of schooling (years) 6.3 1999
Education-Population with at least some secondary education (% ages 25 and older) 48.7 1995-2000
Health-Infant Mortality rate (per 1000 live births) 37.9 1990-1995
Health-Life expectancy at birth (years) 68.3 before 1990
Health-Under-five mortality rate (per 1000 live births) 47.7 1990-1995
Gross Domestic Product per capita (2011 PPP $) 5730.1 2000-2005
Gross National Income per capita (2011 PPP $) 5663.5 2005-2006

A commenter asked for the trajectories, two are shown here:

Human Development Index 1990-2015 (light blue: China, dark: India)

Human Development Index 1990-2015: China and India
Gross National Income per capita (2011 PPP $) 1990-2015 (light blue: China, dark: India)
Gross National Income per capita (2011 PPP $)