Human Development Report 2016

The deprivations
facing women are the
most extreme barrier
to global progress in
human development
Africa has the highest loss of human development
because of inequality (32 percent). 7
At the country level unequal distribution of
human development occurs both in low human
development countries, such as Comoros
(where 46 percent of human development is lost
because of inequality) and in very high human
development countries, such as Chile (where 18
percent of human development is lost because of
inequality). 8 The IHDI indicates that human development
for everyone will require considerable
interventions to overcome unequal distributions
in key capabilities within countries.
Gender Development Index and
Gender Inequality Index
Women are more likely than men to suffer from
low human development. 9 Many groups are
disadvantaged, but the systemic deprivations of
women relative to men deserve to be highlighted
because women constitute half the world’s
population. The deprivations facing women are
the most extreme barrier to global progress in
human development.
Despite the fact that in all regions women
have longer life expectancy than do men and
the fact that in most regions the expected number
of years of schooling for girls is similar to
that for boys, women consistently have a lower
HDI value than do men. The largest differences
captured by the GDI are in South Asia, where
the HDI value for women is 17.8 percent lower
than the HDI value for men, followed by the
Arab States with a 14.4 percent difference and
Sub-Saharan Africa with 12.3 percent.
Much of the variation in HDI between
women and men is due to lower income among
women relative to men and to lower educational
attainment among women relative to men. Part
of the variation in the HDI between men and
women is generated by barriers to women working
outside the home, to accessing education,
to voicing their concerns in political arenas, to
shaping policies and to receiving the benefits of
high-quality and accessible health care.
The GII is a composite index that captures
the inequality that many women face in reproductive
health, secondary education, political
representation and the labour market (figure
2.2). Women are the most disadvantaged in low
human development countries. 10
FIGURE 2.2
Women are the most disadvantaged in low human
development countries
Low
human
development
.590
Very high
human development
.174
.491
Medium
human development
.291
A challenge to global progress in human development
across all regions and groups, gender
inequality is most severe in low and medium
human development countries and in the Arab
States, South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. 11
As countries’ human development improves,
women’s choices and opportunities must be
equal to those of men so that everyone benefits
from advances in human development.
Multidimensional Poverty Index
High
human
development
Note: 1 indicates absolute inequality, as measured by the Gender Inequality
Index, and 0 indicates perfect equality.
Source: Human Development Report Office.
Deprived people often lack capabilities and
opportunities across multiple dimensions. The
MPI, which is calculated for 102 developing
countries, reveals more about the depth and
overlapping nature of people’s nonincome deprivations
than do one-dimensional measures of
poverty. Based on 10 indicators, the MPI identifies
households that are acutely deprived by
their health, education and standard of living.
Almost 1.5 billion people in the developing
countries for which the MPI is calculated live
in multidimensional poverty, 53.9 percent of
them in South Asia and 33.5 percent in Sub-
Saharan Africa. 12 People are also deprived in
developed countries (box 2.1).
Some systematic patterns of deprivation can
be inferred from poverty measures. People in
rural areas are far more likely than people in
urban areas to be multidimensionally poor (29
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