Khalatbari-Soltani et al
Although currently infeasible to palliate backwards such data deficiencies at an individual level, this critical information gap might be indirectly approached through country-sensitive aggregated socioeconomic indexes as independent variables predicting cumulative COVID-19 official statistics (eg, total cases or total deaths per million). The yearly published aggregated Human Development Index (HDI) fits the needs of this exercise. Although criticised for construction weaknesses in its early phase (1990),