Classification of countries based on development indices by using K-means and grey relational analysis

Clustering countries based on their development profile is important, as it helps in the efficient allocation and use of resources for institutions like the World Bank, IMF and many others. However, measuring the status of development in each country is challenging, as development encompasses several facets such as economic, social, environmental and institutional aspects. These dimensions should be captured and aggregated appropriately before attempting to classify countries based on development. In this context, this paper attempts to measure various dimensions of development through four indices namely, Economic Index (EI), Social Index (SI), Sustainability Index (SUI) and Institutional Index (II) for the period between 1996 through 2015 for 102 countries. And then we categorize the countries based on these development indices using the grey relational analysis and K-means clustering method. Our study classifies countries into four clusters with twelve countries in the first cluster, fifty in second, twenty-seven and thirteen countries in third and fourth clusters respectively. Having taken each of the dimensions of development independently, our results show that no cluster has performed poorly in all four aspects.