Mapping Human Development at the Sub-National Level: Spatial Contours of Development in the US

Understanding human development at the international, regional, and national level is essential to understanding the needs and wants of vast populations around the world. Since the late 1980's, that has been the goal of the United Nations' Development Program. The program has published hundreds of reports at each of the above levels. However, development reports at the national level tend to be reserved for areas of crisis, such as civil war, famine, etc. Because of this, and the lack of current literature on the subject, little is known about human development in the United States and what is known is abstract in terms of geographic visualization. These abstract associations are often related to any number of regional or community level 'evils' that are relationally linked to lower development. This project aims to apply the United Nations' Human Development Index to the United States in order to create a sub-national index of relative development for U.S. counties. Due to the inherent spatial methodology in the development of the Human Development Index, this project introduces the use of geographic information system tools in hopes of better capturing the resulting distribution of human development in the U.S. The final map presents an interesting picture of high levels of variation in sub-national Human Development.