How developed your country is and how it is ranked in the world?
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has just published its annual Human Development Index, painting a grim picture of the prospects for millions of people in some of the world’s poorest nations.
The Human Development Index ranks countries based on development issues, progress and policies, the UNDP report explains. This year’s study focuses on the connection between development, equity and environmental sustainability.
The UN began calculating Human Development Index (HDI) in 1990, the index were devised and launched by Pakistani economist Mahbub ul Haq in 1990 and had the explicit purpose “to shift the focus of development economics from national income accounting to people centered policies”.
Mahbub, who was a PhD from Yale University, USA, and who tenured in the Pakistani Ministry of Finance, World Bank and UNDP, brought together a group of well-known development economists including Nobel prize laureate Amartya Sen to work on the formation of a single composite measure of human development, this became what we known as the HDI today.
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How developed your country is? Not only the surface but also the society
HDI is a comparative measure of life expectancy, literacy, education and standards of living for countries worldwide. It is a standard means of measuring well-being of citizens across the world, used to distinguish whether the country is a developed, a developing or an under-developed country, and also to measure the impact of economic policies on quality of life.
The most developed countries in the world according to UNDP’s 2011 ranking are Norway, Australia and the Netherlands. The United States ranks fourth. Burundi, Niger and Congo make up the bottom 3.
There are few territories the UN left out, this include Taiwan (non-UN member), North Korea and Somalia (unstable nations or unwilling to provide the necessary data at the time of publication), Marshall Islands, Monaco, Nauru, San Marino, Macau, Tuvalu and Vatican City (micro-states) States under governance of other countries like Greenland and Western Sahara are also not included. Newly independent South Sudan is not included due to lack of data. Cuba, who lodged a formal complaint last year due to its lack of inclusion, is now on the list.
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HDI measure includes the welfare & living standard of people in the country
The report contains 185 pages, explaining about the development issues for nations across the world and how they came with the final scores for each country. A HDI over 0.84 is generally accepted as a developed nation, but other conditions apply. The full report can be downloaded here: http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/h … wnload/en/
Taiwan, Monaco and Macau, who actually have very stable economies, did calculate their own HDI. Taiwan HDI - 0.882 (ranked 22nd among countries if included), so does Macau - 0.909 (ranked 6th), Monaco - 0.946 (ranked 1st)
Norway (Monaco if included) topped Europe, Japan (Macau if included) at helm in Asia, Australia in Asia-Pacific, Israel in Middle East, the U.S. in Americas, Barbados in Central America, Argentina in South America, and Seychelles in Africa.
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Southeast Asian HDI & Annual Gross National Income per capita
- Singapore : 0.866 / US$52,569
- Brunei : 0.838 / US$45,753
- Malaysia : 0.761 / US$13,685
- Thailand : 0.682 / US$7,694
- Philippines : 0.644 / US$3,478
- Indonesia : 0.617 / US$3,716
- Vietnam : 0.593 / US$2,805
- Laos : 0.524 / US$2,242
- Cambodia : 0.523 / US$1,848
- Timor Leste : 0.495 / US$3,005
- Myanmar : 0.483 / US$1,535
World HDI
