Jahan/Rosling Response

Data 150

Suditi Shyamsunder

What makes something revolutionary? Revolutionary means making a paradigm shift. It means changing the world’s perspective on something that had been held as true. This is exactly what happened when the definitin of human development was turned on its head. While in the past we have often measured the relative success of populations and countries around the world by their GDP and economic success, the Human Development Index (HDI) urges society to shift their view on what is truly important.

The HDI is a measure of countries that puts people first. However, growth and economic success do not always correlate with human happiness and comfort, which is why this idea of focusing on the people is so revolutionary. Throughout the world, we need to focus more on maintaining people’s health and ensuring access to proper medical care as well as educating populations of people in need of the liberation that comes with knowledge. Rather than focusing on a booming economy, the HDI focuses on health, standard of living, and education which are far more important when viewing through a lens directed at human life rather than industry. Jahan’s definition of human development is focused on improving quality of life throughout the world. This does not necessarily correlate with taller buildings or larger malls, but instead is focused on improving life expectancy and lifting those in need out of poverty.

In Rosling’s TED Talk, I was intrigued by his goal of making data free and available to the public. I also found it interesting when he presented data on China, which represents a country that became more prosperous and influential when it promoted its health system and bettered the lives of its people. This further connects to the idea Jahan discussed that human devlopment ought to be measured based on the person, and as health increases, this example shows that positive economic impacts can also occur. In his talk, he also presented graphs with different countries represented as various sized circles that related to population. After evaluating those graphs, he broke some of the countries apart to show how different parts of the same country can be very different in terms of life expectancy and other factors of human development. He proved that using one method to help an entire country is not likely to be super effective because within one country there are many different levels of prosperity and human health. This is the danger od using averages when describing development.

In essence, the HDI sets a precedent to be followed in our daily lives. Keep people in mind, and base your actions around what is best for those you care for. This is arguably more important than anything money can buy.