Inter-country inequality in human development indicators

This paper compares the degree of inter-country inequality in three measure s of human development (the Human Development Index (HDI), the Gender-Relat ed Development Index (GDI) and the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM)) to tho se in real income as measured by real GDP per capita in PPP$ (RY) and adjus ted real GDP per capita in PPPS (ARY). To this end, three inequality measur es with convenient decomposition properties are used. The results show that inter-country inequalities in RY and ARY are greater than those in all the three human development indicators, irrespective of the inequality measure used. Furthermore, GDI and GEM both exhibit higher degrees of inter-countr y inequality than does HDI. In addition, GEM exhibits the highest level of inter-country inequality among the three human development indicators, irre spective of the inequality measure used.