Improvement of the method measuring the security of human development: case of Ukraine

Abstract

In conditions of instability of economic, environmental, social and other processes that affect human development, the need to prevent their negative impact actualizes the issue of measuring the security of human development. The aim of the study is to highlight the importance of security phenomenon in the context of human development and improve a Human Development Index. In this paper the method of analysis and generalization was used to identify the existing approaches to the human development measuring; also expert evaluations and correlation analysis were used to improve the composite index. This, a method has been proposed for measuring the level of human development security. The peculiarity of this method is phased, three-tier integral measurement of the human development security in terms of the following dimensions: long and healthy life, education, decent standard of living, adjusted to the correction coefficients of prevailing threats for each of the dimensions. The formation of correction coefficients was carried out by identifying the prevailing threats. To illustrate these ideas, data on regions of Ukraine were used and the research period was 2012–2017. The implementation of the proposed method of measurement allows determining the objective level of human development security in the regions of Ukraine and identifying the percentage of lost opportunities. This, the study empirically confirms and theoretically proves that human development is a process of enlarging the human opportunities and freedoms, but the dominant threats hinder the expansion of such opportunities and freedoms, that leads to loss of human opportunities.