Human Development Index...(10/9)

How would human development be measured? The United Nations Development Project just us an option. The group just released a human development report to analyse and illustrate its finding of the development taking place in all countries of the world...three criteria are used, life expectancy rate, natinal literacy rate and level together with the annual GNP of the nation/region. The ranking was listed as below:
1. Norway
2. Iceland
3. Australia
4. Luxembourg
5. Canada
6. Sweden
7. Switzerland
8. Ireland
9. Belgium
10. US
11. Japan
16. France
22. Hong Kong
31. Czech Republic
85. China
154. Kenya
Again, the ranking of countries from Northern Europe dominate the top 20 countries. Together with results of other research, the area seems to be a nice habitat for human at this moment, since no this kind of report takes into consideration the physical factor of habitation. Japan, comes top of Asia country, is listed no. 11, while Hong Kong ranks no. 22 out of 165 countries/regions. A simple question to look into is how relevant to assess human development based on the 3 selected factors. What is human development, and how would human develop their world to fit their living? In the capitalism-dominated climate, money, denoted as GNP, is one way to measure the degree of development, on top of the ability of human to survive and acquire knowledge about the world. What would be other factors to consider? The success rate of marriage? The degree of integrity to community and society? Level of practice of democracy and freedom obtained? Ingredient of nutrition in normal diet? The way of thinking easily gets into the general question of "what human exist for" or "how should we develop onwards"? The objective appeared to me for this kind of report is just a way to prove how the group is working for the poverty nations, and perhaps to arouse people in the wealthy nations to look into the living condition in the developing world. However, when you look at the media coverage on the report, the attention is usually drawn to which nation ranks the top on the table or how is my country ranked...check out more info on http://hdr.undp.org/presskit/hdr2005