Utilization and Comparison of Multi Attribute Decision Techniques to Rank Countries in Terms of Human Development Index

Human Development Index (HDI) that is reported by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) for countries across the world has been used as a useful tool for ranking countries in terms of human development. Since HDI is calculated from the arithmetic mean of amount of life expectancy at birth, education and GDP per capita indexes, with equally allocated weight, it has always faced criticisms by some scholars and policy makers. Therefore, in an attempt to eliminate some of the weakness associated with the index, this study utilizes Entropy and AHP techniques to obtain the relative weights of HDI constituents. SAW and TOPSIS techniques, as well as Numerical Taxonomy analysis are also used as a replacement for arithmetic average method for ranking countries in terms of human development range. Each of the above methods, due to their specific approach, has different results. Therefore, apart from statistical analysis for individual method, an aggregated approach is also employed to rank countries in terms of Human Development Index.