The Human Development Index (HDI) is an indicator that is calculated annually in a United Nations Development Programme. The index correlates with some countries indicators such as life expectancy, education, and income per capita. It was developed by Pakistani economist Mahbub ul Haq and Indian economist Amartya Sen in 1990. And since then, The Human Development Index is published annually in the Human Development Report.
Top 10 countries by human development
For the last 8 years in a row, Norway ranks first in the Human Development Index. For all 27 years since the introduction of the index, from 2090 to 2018 the first place was taken 14 times by Norway, 8 times by Canada, 3 times by Japan and 2 times by Iceland.
In 2018, the HDI was calculated for 189 countries. Among the countries with the best performance:
- Norway Index: 0.953
- Switzerland Index: 0.944
- Australia Index: 0.939
- Ireland Index: 0.938
- Germany Index: 0.936
- Iceland Index: 0.935
- Hong Kong and Sweden Index: 0.933
- - / -
- Singapore Index: 0.932
- Netherlands Index: 0.931
And the worst positions in the List:
- South Sudan 0.388
- CAR 0.367
- Niger 0.354
List of countries by Human Development Index
The updated indicators will be published in the next UN report “Human Development Report” in the last quarter of 2019.
Additional indices published in the Human Development Report
The Human Development Index was developed in order to rate the level of countries based on prosperity of the people not only on common economic indicators.
At the same time, the Human Development Index is a composite index based on average statistical data for the country. The index does not depend on the inequality level of the population.
In order to address the important development factors in 2010 the new additional indices was introduced: The Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI), The Gender Inequality Index (GII), The Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI).