Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject Economics - Statistics and Methods, grade: 1.00, University of Hamburg, course: Programm: MIBA, 33 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: Why was an index like the Human Development Index (HDI) established in the first place? That question and what the HDI really is about is the topic of this paper. The aim is to highlight its uniqueness and show how it differentiates from other measurement tools of human development. This assignment was done with secondary research only. For a topic that young there are efficient internet sources available which were sufficient enough to complete the assignment based on the oral presentation.