Subnational Human Development Database

In this paper we describe the Subnational Human Development Database. This database contains for the period 1990-2017 for 1625 regions within 161 countries the national and subnational values of the Subnational Human Development Index (SHDI). The subnational values of the SHDI are computed on the basis of three dimension indices, one for education, one for health and one for standard of living, which were constructed using subnational data on four indicators: expected years of schooling, mean years of schooling, life expectancy and gross national income per capita. The subnational values of the four indicators were computed using data from statistical offices and from the Area Database of the Global Data Lab, which contains indicators aggregated from household surveys and census datasets. Values for missing years were estimated by interpolation and extrapolation from real data. The four indicators were constructed in such a way that their population-weighted national averages are equal to their national values in the UNDP-HDI database. At the national level, the SHDI is therefore equal to the official Human Development Index of the UNDP