Human Development in Romania in the Context of the New Methodological Approaches

Specialist’s preoccupation concerning the quantification of the human development through synthetic indexes has been materialized during time in a series of composite indexes, whose methodology was permanently reconsidered from the meaning of quantify more correctly and rigorously the contribution of each involved factor. One of the most known synthetic indexes is the Human Development Index (HDU), which starting with 2010 has suffered important methodological changes. The paper present briefly these methodological changes and emphasize their influence both of the IDU level and of countries classification. It’s also present the evolution of the HDI in Romania in comparison with other European countries, for the period 1980 – 2010, calculated both in the old and in the new variant. The data emphasize the fact that even the new methodology brings us a better rank, Romania is still situated near to the end of classification between the UE countries.