Many common multidimensional indices take the form of a ‘composite indicator’ or a weighted average of several dimension-specific achievements. Composite indicators are widely used in development economics and can often be highly influential. Yet most remain controversial owing to the arbitrary selection of component weights.

In this presentation, we will draw from a series academic papers that we have written on the comparison robustness of composite indicators with respect to weights (Foster, McGillivray and Seth 2009, 2012, 2013), with a particular emphasis on the findings of Seth and McGillivray (2018).

Several studies in the past have proposed testing the robustness of rankings generated by composite indicators with respect to alternative weights but few has provided sufficient guidance on the choice of these alternatives. Seth and McGillivray (2018) propose a holistic yet theoretically novel approach for selecting sets of alternative weights and assessing comparison robustness that is applicable to linear composite indices with any finite number of dimensions.

The approach is founded on the main normative assumption that a consensus has been reached on the minimum and the maximum allowable weights that should be assigned to the components. The approach is applied to showcase the robustness of inter-temporal country improvements generated by arguably the world’s most influential composite development index, the UNDP Human Development Index, for the period 1980-2013.

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Suman Seth is an Associate Professor of Economics at the Leeds University Business School, University of Leeds and a Research Associate at the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), University of Oxford. Suman is a Development Economist and has expertise on measurement methodologies in distributional analysis related to well-being, poverty, inequality and mobility and their policy-oriented applications.

In the past, Suman has served as consultants to the Regional Bureau of Latin America and the Caribbean, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), to the Development Research Groups at the World Bank, and to the Asian Development Bank. Suman has co-authored a book on inequality and poverty measurement with the World Bank and another book on multidimensional poverty measurement and analysis with colleagues at OPHI.