Albania vs. Balkan's Countries as Comparative Analysis of the Human Development Index

Abstract

During the last decades, the central focus of economists was growth of incomes in the early 1990s, the focus shifted towards the quality of life and development strategies being oriented from production to welfare improvement. In recent years a large literature has been developed regarding indicators of welfare and life quality. The Human Development Index (HDI), elaborated by the United Nations Development Program in 1990, was an indicator of life quality and a good proxy indicator of welfare. Human Development Index provides a better alternative to measure countries overall achievements in their social and economic dimensions. In this paper, the theoretical literature review provides a brief history of the human evolution and development aspects. This paper examines the dimensions of Human Development Index like life expectancy, education and income index in Balkan countries. The aim of this paper is to found out the trend of human development in Balkan countries and to make a comparison of various human development aspects in Albania comparing it with other countries in the region. This paper is completed through qualitative methods. Finally the paper will be closed with some conclusions.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n4s3p311