[Proposal] Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index

[Pogromistan]

Hello,

The following is a proposal for a additive (rather than substitutive) feature, specifically a ranking for IHDI. For some time now the primary goal of my nation has been to maximise my inequality adjust human development index (IHDI) to make monitoring this a bit more convenient I recently wrote a small script to calculate this. While it's extremely easy to calculate yourself (as best you can with provided information) and with the existence of the wonderful api simple to automate I found myself wondering if other individuals might want this functionality in a easier to digest format. I searched the forums but found no proposal for such a feature. The way I calculate the IHDI seems like it could be rather trivially added but I'm not sure of the fairness/accuracy of this method. It assumes a perfect income bell curve and that income distribution is equivalent to the health and education distribution. This might be a unreasonable thing to do in which case this whole project is a bit folly. Here is the formula:

IHDI = HDI * (equality + (100 - equality) / 2) / 100

Using this formula IHDI can differ at most from HDI by 50%. This means if you had the most prosperous nation on nationstates and a equality of 0 you'd have a IHDI of 50 equivalent to Egypt. By contrast if you had a perfectly equal society with nothing you'd have a IHDI of 0 equivalent to nothing. You can imagine/calculate what this would mean for your nation and compare the value you get to the above link or look at this table I modified my script to produce (and at the link for context). The table is of my region mates:

Nation	Equality	HDI	IHDI
sulsuland	1.86	18.72	9.5340
juvencus	21.21	57.79	35.0236
xhayparia	35.71	83.57	56.7064
ghirapur	0.62	58.99	29.6778
sideroom	11.95	54.14	30.3048
optiplex_960	37.11	51.28	35.1550
drawkland	32.63	97.35	64.5576
the_confederacy_of_nationalism	3.86	64.12	33.2975
mushcap	60.22	96.53	77.3301
oteshknir	12.43	80.13	45.0450
high_lowland_hrothgar	2.64	50.95	26.1475
pogromistan	86.22	97.77	91.0336
sonnelian_oceania	27.72	49.68	31.7256
nationstates_the_gathering	30.14	49.95	32.5024
westmirk	33.64	50.28	33.5970
smile	22.94	50.92	31.3005
turita	32.94	48.59	32.2977
oscioru	8.31	56.67	30.6896
streaken_drawk	0.45	52.82	26.5288

Code: Select all

#!/bin/ksh
# this is a script to calculate the inequality adjusted income of all the nations in a region.
# replace ftp with wget, and #!/bin/ksh with your shell and it should run on most unixs.
# it doesn't work properly in many situations because it's a garbo shell script.

region=$1

api=$(ftp -o - "https://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/api.cgi?region=$region;&q=nations" 2>&1)
set -A nations $(echo $api | grep -o '<NATIONS>[^<]*' | grep -o '[a-z][^:]*')

for nation in "${nations[@]}"
do
        # "scale=68+33" fetches the human development index and the inequality index respectively.
        api=$(ftp -o - "https://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/api.cgi?nation=$nation;q=census;scale=68+33;mode=score" 2>&1)
        set -A values $(echo $api | grep -o '<SCORE>[^<]*' | grep -o '[0-9][^\n]*')
        echo -n "$nation "

        echo "scale=4; ${values[1]} * (${values[0]} + (100 - ${values[0]}) / 2) / 100"|bc)"
done


thank you for your time and consideration, and sorry for any formating oddities, I tried my best, I don't use a traditional web browser.
edit: it's late, sorry for any language oddities as well, I tried to fix a few.

[Galiantus III]

Income equality does not contribute to people's well-being. Reduction of poverty does. Everyone in a society could have the exact same income, but if that income is not sufficient to provide a good quality of life then everyone will be in poverty.

[Pogromistan]

Income equality does not contribute to people's well-being. Reduction of poverty does. Everyone in a society could have the exact same income, but if that income is not sufficient to provide a good quality of life then everyone will be in poverty.

this isn't really relevant to if the rank should be visible to users so much as if users when given this rank should care about it. regardless the rank to some extent does take your problem into account, as I mentioned if your nation has nothing and absolute equality your IHDI would still be zero using this formula. focusing back on your first point I think this is only true to the extent to which poverty exists. once everyones needs are met and everyone has equitable (not equal) opportunity I suspect the psychological benefit of having more equal quality of life outweighs the benefit a few would gain by being better off. maybe that's just me though.

[Galiantus III]

Income equality does not contribute to people's well-being. Reduction of poverty does. Everyone in a society could have the exact same income, but if that income is not sufficient to provide a good quality of life then everyone will be in poverty.

this isn't really relevant to if the rank should be visible to users so much as if users when given this rank should care about it. regardless the rank to some extent does take your problem into account, as I mentioned if your nation has nothing and absolute equality your IHDI would still be zero using this formula. focusing back on your first point I think this is only true to the extent to which poverty exists. once everyones needs are met and everyone has equitable (not equal) opportunity I suspect the psychological benefit of having more equal quality of life outweighs the benefit a few would gain by being better off. maybe that's just me though.

Ah, I misunderstood the proposed change, I see. And there is definitely something to be said about the psychological aspect of income equality, but I think the effect is more on crime levels, which then in turn affect human development.

[Pogromistan]

Ah, I misunderstood the proposed change, I see. And there is definitely something to be said about the psychological aspect of income equality, but I think the effect is more on crime levels, which then in turn affect human development.

alright cool, and yes that's a good point aswell.