Introduction:

One of the most important achievements of science in the 20th century has been the progress in measuring the comparative wealth of countries through indicators, highlighting the gross domestic product and the human development index.

Objective:

To evaluate the validity of the comprehensive demographic index in measuring the level of development and health status of a population to establish a hierarchical order according to these two characteristics.

Method:

An ecological study was carried out, the 191 countries that in 2019 had information for the calculation of the human development index were chosen as the population; The sample was selected by simple random sampling. The information was obtained from the Datamacro website. To analyse the data, the Hernández-Nieto and Aiken V validity coefficients, factor analysis, Spearman correlation and the Kappa coefficient were used.

Results:

The analysis by items reflected a high agreement between the judges. There was a high correlation and high agreement between the comprehensive demographic index and the human development index. A perfect correlation was identified between the evaluated indicators and the degree of development, with correlations equal to 1 and -1.

Conclusion:

The comprehensive demographic index constitutes a valid indicator in the evaluation of aging, health status and degree of development between countries, which allowed the ordering of populations according to their development and health condition.

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