The Subnational Human Development Database

Abstract

In this paper we describe the Subnational Human Development Database. This database contains for the period 1990-2017 for 1625 regions within 161 countries the national and subnational values of the Subnational Human Development Index (SHDI), for the three dimension indices on the basis of which the SHDI is constructed - education, health and standard of living --, and for the four indicators needed to create the dimension indices -- expected years of schooling, mean years of schooling, life expectancy and gross national income per capita. The subnational values of the four indicators were computed using data from statistical offices and from the Area Database of the Global Data Lab, which contains indicators aggregated from household surveys and census datasets. Values for missing years were estimated by interpolation and extrapolation from real data. By normalizing the population-weighted averages of the indicators to their national levels in the UNDP-HDI database, values of the SHDI and its dimension indices were obtained that at national level equal their official versions of the UNDP.

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1. World maps with the distribution of the education dimension indicators.

(a) Distribution of EYS values. (b) Distribution of MYS values.

Figure 2. World maps with the distribution of the Standard of Living and Health dimension indicators.

(a) Distribution of LGNIc values. (b) Distribution of LIFEX values.

Figure 3. Density functions of the scaling coefficients corresponding to EYS, MYS, LEXP and LGNIc.

Figure 4. Data processing statistics of the SHDI indicators over time.

The different colours indicate the share of ‘Missing’, ‘Real’, ‘Interpolated’, ‘Extrapolated by 5 or less years’ and ‘Extrapolated by more than 5 years’ observations for EYS (a), MYS (b), LEXP (c), LGNIc (d) from 1990 up to 2017.

Figure 5. Comparison between real and model-based national-level estimates for the Health and Standard of Living dimension indicators.

(a) Comparison for Life expectancy at birth. (b) Comparison for Log GNI per capita.

Figure 6. Relative error ventile distributions for the different SHDI indicators.

Extrapolation relative errors are shown in the first column and interpolation ones in the second one. The shaded bands indicate the position of the different distribution ventiles. (a,b) Relative errors for EYS. (c,d) Relative errors for MYS. (e,f) Relative errors for LEXP. (g,h) Relative errors for LGNIc.

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Data Citations

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