Q.Define 'liberty indicator' with the help of an example and state its importance.

Concept: Liberty indicator — a measure of the extent of democratic participation in the social and political decision-making of a country, capturing the civil and political freedom its citizens actually enjoy.

The standard Human Development Index (HDI) is built only on income, health and education — it says nothing about whether people are free. A liberty indicator fills this gap by measuring the degree of democratic participation and freedom available to citizens.

Example: the extent of constitutional protection given to the rights of citizens, or the extent of constitutional protection of the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law. A country whose constitution firmly guarantees citizens' rights and an independent judiciary scores high on such an indicator.

Importance:

• It captures the dimension of freedom, which the income, health and education indicators do not.
• Added alongside HDI, it gives a fuller, more realistic picture of human development and well-being. …

Concept and Intuition

Human development is usually measured by the Human Development Index (HDI), which combines income (standard of living), health (life expectancy) and education (literacy and years of schooling). But a country can score well on all three and still deny its people basic freedoms. To capture this missing dimension, economists introduced the idea of a liberty indicator — a measure of the extent of democratic participation in the social and political decision-making of a country, i.e. the degree of civil and political freedom its citizens actually enjoy.

Definition

A liberty indicator is an indicator that reflects the extent of democratic participation and the civil and political freedom available to the citizens of a country.

Example

Commonly cited liberty indicators include:

• the extent of constitutional protection given to the rights of citizens, and
• the extent of constitutional protection of the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law.

For instance, a country whose constitution firmly guarantees fundamental rights and an independent judiciary that upholds the rule of law would rank high on a liberty indicator, whereas one where such protections are weak or absent would rank low — regardless of how high its per-capita income might be.

Importance

1. Captures freedom, a dimension the HDI ignores. Income, health and education tell us about material and social progress but say nothing about whether people are free; a liberty indicator fills this gap. …