Efficiency in the generation of social welfare in Mexico: A proposal in the presence of bad outputs

One of the main goals of any country is to secure the general welfare of society, entailing positive levels of education, health and income, coupled with low levels of social inequality. The following paper studies the efficient use of economic and social resources to generate social welfare in the presence of bad outputs in the states of Mexico during 2010. A two-level data envelopment analysis model was used to determine how efficient the 32 states of the Mexican Republic were, considering as model variables the socioeconomic indicators of the three dimensions of human development (education, health and income), and the data on poverty or inequity in the country. The analysis of the results reveals that only 5 of the 32 units studied were efficient in generating welfare and in reducing poverty, while the rest need to increase their welfare levels and especially reduce inequity in education and income using the economic and social resources they possess.     

India’s Social Development in a Decade of Reforms: 1990–91/1999–2000

The economic reforms initiated in India in 1991 have brought about visible upliftment of economic conditions of the country. This paper examines if the economic process is associated with an enhancement of India’s social development in equal measure in the reform decade of nineties. Ray (1989) considered thirteen social indicators of India and constructed the country’s social development index (SDI) as a certain weighted average of the selected indicators, for the years between 1950–51 and 1975–76. The present work broadly follows Ray (1989) in tracking the social development in the decade of economic reforms from 1990–91 to 1999–2000. The movement of SDI in nineties has been compared with the movements of India’s per capita income and plan expenditure on the social sector. The results show that though there has been growth in the social sector, it is not by far quite encouraging and perhaps more needs to be done in the social sector. The views expressed in the article are those of the author and not of the institution he serves.     

福祉测量方法评述

人们生活质量和生活水平的综合表达是＂福祉＂,对＂福祉＂的量化测度方式总体趋势上更加注重综合的多层面的评估,关注生态环境的因素。着重对经济统计方法如人均国民收入、真实储蓄、可持续经济福利指数、真实进步指标等所形成的福祉量化方法以及社会学调查方法如人文发展指数、社会生产函数所形成的福祉量化方法进行了评述。     

基于因子分析法的我国区域人类发展实证研究

本文介绍并引进了以因子分析法为基础构建的人类发展指数(HDI)。通过指标体系的构建、评估方法的选择及与联合国开发计划署制订的人类发展指数比较发现,基于因子分析法的人类发展指数较之传统的方法更适合测算与度量我国区域人类发展水平。     

也谈发展的涵义

GNP或GDP发展观和产业结构变化的发展观都有很大的局限性,不能解释发展的全部内涵.人类发展指数(HDI)及托达罗的发展观对发展有了较为全面的论述,但仍没有涵盖发展更全面的含义.其实,发展就是满足人类不同需求层次,发展就是可持续的问题.此外,发展也还应该包括政治上的自由、民主和进步以及人们精神面貌的提高、男女平等等诸多方面,发展的涵义还应当扩展到世界的和平和谐发展和发展中国家与发达国家的合作.理解发展的全面含义对于我们中国这个正处在蒸蒸日上发展过程的国家意义深远.     

Education,Human Development and Quality of Life: Measurement Issues and Implications for India

This paper analyses and compares the measurement of indicators and variables in the construction of education index in Human Development Index (HDI) at the global, national and 18 sub-national human development reports in India since 1990. The results show non-comparability of measurement of the education indicators and variables. This implies that vertical and horizontal comparability of HDI may not be plausible for India. Implications of these analyses are highlighted for measurement of quality of life indices with special reference to physical quality of life index. Policy lessons are derived for future measurement of education index for India in particular, and other developing countries in general.

法国通信发展对人文发展指数贡献效率研究

本文利用联合国计划开发署提出的人文发展指数HDI计算方法为基础,以法国2005-2009年间的HDI为产出变量,法国通讯发展为投入变量建立非参数估计的数据包络分析DEA模型,分析了法国通讯发展对人文发展的贡献效率。通过分析表明：通讯业应该向高规模效率方向发展,是提高法国人文发展指数的最有效途径。     

Measurement of social development: an international comparison

PQLI and HDI are the two most popular measures of development, besides per capita income. Over the years, PQLI appears to be not much in use for regional comparisons, especially after the introduction of HDI. While PQLI considers only the physical variables—adult literacy, life expectancy at birth and infant survival rate, HDI has life expectancy at birth, educational attainment and real GDP per capita (PPP$). PQLI and HDI are similar, the main difference between the two being the inclusion of income in HDI and exclusion of the same from PQLI. In a sense, HDI represents both physical and financial attributes of development and PQLI has only the physical aspects of life. The present author took the lines of PQLI to express development in terms of physical variables and considering development as a multidimensional phenomenon, Ray (1989) [Ray, A. K. (1989). On the measurement of certain aspects of social development, Social Indicators Research (Vol. 21, pp. 35–92). The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.] included as many as 13 physical variables to represent social development across 40 countries; no financial variable was included in the construction of composite index, termed as the Social Development Index, SDI. Incidentally, like PQLI, SDI was introduced before HDI. Unlike PQLI and HDI, SDI considers (i) a large number of indicators representing various concern areas and (ii) a set of objective methods for combining the development indicators as a composite index. Ray (1989) has been restated and updated in this article with newer cross-country information. In the present study, SDI has been constructed for over 102 countries, including 21 OECD countries, using 10 development indicators, instead of 13 indicators in the past. Apart from presenting objective methods for combining indicators into SDI, the present study asserts that SDI works better than HDI as a measure of development for an international comparison. The views expressed in the article are those of the author and not of the institution he serves.     

“公共支出均衡”的分析：中国样本

因为资源的稀缺性,公共财政支出的内部结构存在着均衡态,即公共支出均衡.不同于市场均衡,公共支出均衡意味着在政府公共支出规模约束下经济效率目标与公平产品目标的同时最大化.从均衡视角评估公共支出结构正是经济学对政府支出定位的应有之意.基于人类发展指数的较长时间序列相关数据的实证检验表明,我国公共支出中各支出项目对HDI的边际贡献率在时间序列上表现出显著的收敛趋势,这说明我国公共支出结构在长期中表现出均衡改进的特征.而各支出项目边际贡献率变迁趋势的差异性则表明依照均衡原则调整并优化我国公共支出结构是亟待之需.