List of countries by Human Development Index

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) compiles the Human Development Index (HDI) of 189 countries in the annual Human Development Report. The index considers the health, education and income in the country to provide a measure of human development which is comparable between countries and over time.[1][2]

World map representing Human Development Index categories (based on 2019 data, published in 2020).

Very high (≥ 0.800)   High (0.700–0.799)   Medium (0.550–0.699)

Low (≤ 0.549)   Data unavailable

World map of countries by Human Development Index scores in increments of 0.050 (based on 2019 data, published in 2020)

  ≥ 0.900

  0.850–0.899

  0.800–0.849

  0.750–0.799

  0.700–0.749

  0.650–0.699

  0.600–0.649

  0.550–0.599

  0.500–0.549

  0.450–0.499

  0.400–0.449

  ≤ 0.399

  Data unavailable

The first human development index was published in 1990 with the goal to be a more comprehensive measure of human development than purely economic measures. The report chooses three key components of human development, longevity (later changed to "Long and healthy life"), knowledge, and decent living standards. For each dimension an indicator is chosen which in the 2020 report is life expectancy at birth; expected years of schooling for children and mean years of schooling for adults; and Gross National Income per capita respectively. 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 of the three indexes, the cube root of the product of the indexes, is the human development index. A value above 0.800 is classified as very high, between 0.700 and 0.799 high, 0.550 to 0.699 as medium and anything below 0.550 as low.[3][1][4]

The data used to calculate HDI comes mostly from UN agencies and internation institutions such as UNESCO, UNDESA, the World Bank, IMF and 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.[5][4]

The Human Development index has several limitations in measuring the human development of countries including that it does not account for dimensions of human development such as inequality and participation in governance. It is also an average of large groups of people and can not show more granular development for different regions, ethnic groups or gender. [6][7] To resolve one of the limitations the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI) was introduced in the 2010 report which stated that "the IHDI is the actual level of human development (accounting for inequality)" and "the HDI can be viewed as an index of 'potential' human development (or the maximum IHDI that could be achieved if there were no inequality)".[8] To reflect developmental differences within countries a Subnational HDI (SHDI) was introduced in 2018 where the human development index is calculated in an internationally comparable way for over 1600 regions.[9]