The balance of growth and development: Siamese Twins?

Economic growth of a country is defined by an increase in its output which is measured by calculating the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).It is now increasingly recognized that the economic growth of a country is meaningful only when it simultaneously secures the well- being of its citizens. The Human Development Index (HDI), published by the United Nations Development Programme, can be used to judge the state of any economy so far as its development and social wellbeing is considered. The growth of an economy normally precedes its social development and one would expect that a country would eventually realize both economic and social well- being. All countries are now ranked by its economic prosperity as well as their development levels. It is however true for many countries that the rankings are not correlated. This paper seeks to examine this relationship for the top twenty economies in the world. In order to test the above, the paper has used Spearman's Rank Correlation between GDP and HDI ranks of the top 20 countries as per their GDP rank. It is found that there exists a significant rank correlation for 17 out of the top 20 countries between their GDP and HDI ranks.