The Human Development Index (HDI) is a compound index that measures the levels of a country in three basic aspects: life expectancy, education level and the family income. The HDI indicates an alternative to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which measures the overall wealth of a country, adding two social indexes: the education pattern and the health level. The HDI is a useful index because it shows the social area to people who have political responsabilities in a country, suggesting them the evaluation of the country development including social aspects, and permitting the comparison with the other countries. Besides the HDI, the study describes indexes which measure the human condition, HPI-1 and HPI-2, of poverty in development and in selected countries, the GDI and GEM, which are gender related indexes to check development and participation, and the HDI-M which is an appropriate index to measure the human condition in an urban environment. The study makes a diagnosys of the Brazilian situation and evolution, since the creation of these indexes. The dissertation proposes HDI optimization models. Such proposal might simplify and improve the efficiency of the decision making process. In this way, public officials may take their decisions based on a mathematical model which will increase the ratio benefits and investment costs.