Developing an index of socio-economic development consistent with Maqasid al-Shariah

Abstract EN

Human Development Index (HDI) is the most widely used index for assessing the level of economic development ; however, it does not account explicitly for environmental degradation, social infrastructure, income distribution and poverty.

This study strives to assist in building a comprehensive index that covers these elements which are considered important for ensuring sustainable development and that are also reflective of the maqāṣid al-Sharīʿah.

Our findings represent striking differences between HDI and Extended HDI (E-HDI) rankings as we studied the position of 108 countries divided into non-OIC high-income countries (39 countries), non-OIC middle-income countries (26 countries) and OIC Muslim countries (43 countries).

Among the 43 Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) countries in our sample, 16 OIC countries improve their ranking in E-HDI as compared to HDI.

Interestingly, other than Iraq, all of the OIC countries which improve their ranking are relatively poorer and non-oil rich countries.

Strikingly, all 39 non-OIC high income countries in our sample go down in E-HDI ranking as compared to their respective rank in HDI.

Contrastingly, all non-OIC middle-income countries except Romania perform much better in E-HDI as compared to HDI.

The top 19 countries in E-HDI all comprise of non-OIC middle-income countries in our sample.

It shows that the broad-based indicators that we have included to account for non-income development aspects consistent with maqāṣid al-Sharīʿah make a significant impact on the rankings.