The Gross national income (GNI) is the total domestic and foreign output claimed by residents of a country, consisting of gross domestic product (GDP) plus factor incomes earned by foreign residents, minus income earned in the domestic economy by non-residents. GNI is based on ownership, and GDP is based on location.
The income groupings use GNI per capita since they follow the same methodology used by the World Bank when determining its operational lending policy. However GNI per capita does not completely summarize a country’s level of development or measure welfare, it has proved to be a useful and easily available indicator that is closely correlated with other, nonmonetary measures of the quality of life, such as life expectancy at birth, mortality rates of children, and enrollment rates in school. But there are some limitations associated with the use of GNI. For instance, GNI may be underestimated in lower-income economies that have more informal, subsistence activities. Nor does GNI reflect inequalities in income distribution. Also the Atlas method used to convert local currencies into a common U.S. dollar is based on official exchange rates, which do not account for differences in domestic price levels. The Atlas method, with three-year average exchange rates adjusted for inflation, lessens the effect of exchange rate fluctuations and abrupt changes, but an alternative method would be to use the purchasing power parity (PPP) conversion factors of the International Comparison Program. To date, however, issues concerning methodology, geographic coverage, timeliness, quality and extrapolation techniques have precluded the use of PPP conversion factors for this purpose.
This is when Human Development Index (HDI) comes into play. The HDI was created to highlight that people and their capabilities should be the ultimate criteria for assessing the development of a