![Countries by Human Development Index (2021)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/Countries_by_Human_Development_Index_%282021%29.svg)
The
United Nations Development Programme
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)french: Programme des Nations unies pour le développement, PNUD is a United Nations agency tasked with helping countries eliminate poverty and achieve sustainable economic growth and human dev ...
(UNDP) compiles the
Human Development Index
The Human Development Index (HDI) is a statistic composite index of life expectancy, education (mean years of schooling completed and expected years of schooling upon entering the education system), and per capita income indicators, whi ...
(HDI) of 191 nations in the annual
Human Development Report
The Human Development Report (HDR) is an annual Human Development Index report published by the Human Development Report Office of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
The first HDR was launched in 1990 by the Pakistani economist ...
. The index considers the
health
Health, according to the World Health Organization, is "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity".World Health Organization. (2006)''Constitution of the World Health Organiza ...
,
education
Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty. Va ...
and
income
Income is the consumption and saving opportunity gained by an entity within a specified timeframe, which is generally expressed in monetary terms. Income is difficult to define conceptually and the definition may be different across fields. For ...
in a given country to provide a measure of
human development Human development may refer to:
* Development of the human body
* Developmental psychology
* Human development (economics)
* Human Development Index, an index used to rank countries by level of human development
* Human evolution, the prehistoric ...
which is comparable between countries and over time.
The HDI is the most widely used indicator of human development and has changed how people view the concept.
However, several aspects of the index have received criticism. Some scholars have criticized how the factors are weighed, in particular how an additional year of life expectancy is valued differently between countries;
and the limited factors it considers, noting the omission of factors such as the levels of distributional and gender inequality. In response to the former, the UNDP introduced the
inequality-adjusted Human Development Index
This is a list of countries by inequality-adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI), as published by the UNDP in its 2022 Human Development Report. According to the 2016 Report, "The IHDI can be interpreted as the level of human development when in ...
(IHDI) in its 2010 report, and in response to the latter the
Gender Development Index The Gender Development Index (GDI) is an index designed to measure gender equality.
GDI, together with the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM), was introduced in 1995 in the Human Development Report written by the United Nations Development Program. ...
(GDI) was introduced in the 1995 report. Others have criticized the perceived oversimplification of using a single number per country.
To reflect developmental differences within countries, a subnational HDI (SHDI) featuring data for more than 1,600 regions was introduced in 2018 by the Global Data Lab at
Radboud University
Radboud University (abbreviated as RU, nl, Radboud Universiteit , formerly ''Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen'') is a public research university located in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. The university bears the name of Saint Radboud, a 9th century D ...
in the Netherlands.
In 2020, the UNDP introduced another index, the
planetary pressures–adjusted Human Development Index
Planetary means relating to a planet or planets. It can also refer to:
;Science
* Planetary habitability, the measure of an astronomical body's potential to develop and sustain life
* Planetary nebula, an astronomical object
;People
* Planetary ...
(PHDI), which decreases the scores of countries with a higher ecological footprint.
Dimensions and indicators
The HDI was first published in 1990 with the goal of being a more comprehensive measure of human development than purely economic measures such as
gross domestic product
Gross domestic product (GDP) is a money, monetary Measurement in economics, measure of the market value of all the final goods and services produced and sold (not resold) in a specific time period by countries. Due to its complex and subjec ...
. The index incorporates three dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, knowledge, and decent living standards. Various
indicators
Indicator may refer to:
Biology
* Environmental indicator of environmental health (pressures, conditions and responses)
* Ecological indicator of ecosystem health (ecological processes)
* Health indicator, which is used to describe the health o ...
are used to quantify how countries perform on each dimension. The indicators used in the 2022 report were
life expectancy at birth
Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for growth, reaction to stimuli, metabolism, energy transf ...
; expected years of schooling for children; mean years of schooling for adults; and
gross national income
The gross national income (GNI), previously known as gross national product (GNP), 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 ...
per capita. The indicators are used to create a health index, an education index and an income index, each with a value between 0 and 1. The
geometric mean
In mathematics, the geometric mean is a mean or average which indicates a central tendency of a set of numbers by using the product of their values (as opposed to the arithmetic mean which uses their sum). The geometric mean is defined as the ...
of the three indices—that is, the cube root of the product of the indices—is the human development index. A value above 0.800 is classified as very high, between 0.700 and 0.799 as high, 0.550 to 0.699 as medium, and below 0.550 as low.
The data used to calculate HDI comes mostly from United Nations agencies and international institutions, such as
(UNESCO),
United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs
The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) is part of the United Nations Secretariat and is responsible for the follow-up to major United Nations Summits and Conferences, as well as services to the United Nations Econ ...
, the
World Bank
The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and grants to the governments of low- and middle-income countries for the purpose of pursuing capital projects. The World Bank is the collective name for the Interna ...
,
International Monetary Fund
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a major financial agency of the United Nations, and an international financial institution, headquartered in Washington, D.C., consisting of 190 countries. Its stated mission is "working to foster globa ...
and
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; french: Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques, ''OCDE'') is an intergovernmental organization, intergovernmental organisation with 38 member countries ...
(OECD). Rarely, when one of the indicators is missing, cross-country regression models are used. Due to improved data and methodology updates, HDI values are not comparable across human development reports; instead, each report recalculates the HDI for some previous years.
Nations
![Average annual HDI growth from 2010 to 2021 published in 2022](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/Average_annual_HDI_growth_from_2010_to_2021_published_in_2022.png)
The Human Development Report includes all 193
United Nations member states
United may refer to:
Places
* United, Pennsylvania, an unincorporated community
* United, West Virginia, an unincorporated community
Arts and entertainment Films
* ''United'' (2003 film), a Norwegian film
* ''United'' (2011 film), a BBC Two f ...
, as well as the
State of Palestine
Palestine ( ar, فلسطين, Filasṭīn), Legal status of the State of Palestine, officially the State of Palestine ( ar, دولة فلسطين, Dawlat Filasṭīn, label=none), is a state (polity), state located in Western Asia. Officiall ...
and
Hong Kong SAR
Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...
. However, The Human Development Index is not calculated for four UN member states:
DPR Korea
North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korean Peninsula and shares borders with China and Russia to the north, at the Yalu (Amnok) and T ...
(North Korea),
Monaco
Monaco (; ), officially the Principality of Monaco (french: Principauté de Monaco; Ligurian: ; oc, Principat de Mónegue), is a sovereign city-state and microstate on the French Riviera a few kilometres west of the Italian region of Lig ...
,
Nauru
Nauru ( or ; na, Naoero), officially the Republic of Nauru ( na, Repubrikin Naoero) and formerly known as Pleasant Island, is an island country and microstate in Oceania, in the Central Pacific. Its nearest neighbour is Banaba Island in Ki ...
, and
Somalia
Somalia, , Osmanya script: 𐒈𐒝𐒑𐒛𐒐𐒘𐒕𐒖; ar, الصومال, aṣ-Ṣūmāl officially the Federal Republic of SomaliaThe ''Federal Republic of Somalia'' is the country's name per Article 1 of thProvisional Constituti ...
. Some components of the index may be calculated for these countries. The
Cook Islands
)
, image_map = Cook Islands on the globe (small islands magnified) (Polynesia centered).svg
, capital = Avarua
, coordinates =
, largest_city = Avarua
, official_languages =
, lan ...
, the
Holy See
The Holy See ( lat, Sancta Sedes, ; it, Santa Sede ), also called the See of Rome, Petrine See or Apostolic See, is the jurisdiction of the Pope in his role as the bishop of Rome. It includes the apostolic episcopal see of the Diocese of Rome ...
(
Vatican City
Vatican City (), officially the Vatican City State ( it, Stato della Città del Vaticano; la, Status Civitatis Vaticanae),—'
* german: Vatikanstadt, cf. '—' (in Austria: ')
* pl, Miasto Watykańskie, cf. '—'
* pt, Cidade do Vati ...
), and
Niue
Niue (, ; niu, Niuē) is an island country in the South Pacific Ocean, northeast of New Zealand. Niue's land area is about and its population, predominantly Polynesian, was about 1,600 in 2016. Niue is located in a triangle between Tong ...
are the only state parties within the
United Nations System
The United Nations System consists of the United Nations' six principal organs (the General Assembly, Security Council, Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), Trusteeship Council, International Court of Justice (ICJ), and the UN Secretariat), ...
which have not been included in the report. In total, the HDI is available for 191 nations.
Global Data Lab also provides data on the HDI of Somalia, putting it at 0.361 (2019), the lowest in the world, though data for Syria is unavailable.
Countries ranked from 1 to 66 in 2021 are designated "very high" HDI, those ranked 67 to 115 are designated "high" HDI, those ranked 116 to 159 are denoted "medium" HDI, and those ranked 160 to 191 are designated "low" HDI.
Regions and groups
The Human Development Report also reports the HDI for various groups of countries. These include regional groupings based on the UNDP regional classifications, HDI groups including the countries currently falling into a given HDI bracket, OECD members and various other UN groupings. The aggregate HDI values are calculated in the same way as for individual countries with the input data being the weighted average for all countries with available data in the group.
See also
*
List of countries by Human Development Index by region
This is a list of countries by Human Development Index, list of countries by the Human Development Index as included in the United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Report organized by continent or other international regions. The ...
**
Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...
**
Asia and Oceania
**
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
**
Latin America
Latin America or
* french: Amérique Latine, link=no
* ht, Amerik Latin, link=no
* pt, América Latina, link=no, name=a, sometimes referred to as LatAm is a large cultural region in the Americas where Romance languages — languages derived f ...
*
*
Notes
References
External links
UN Development Programme Human Development Reports
{{DEFAULTSORT:Countries By Human Development Index, List Of