Human Development Index

This is a list of all countries by Human Development Index as included in a United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Report. The latest report was released on 14 March 2013 and compiled on the basis of estimates for 2012.

In the 2010 Human Development Report a further Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI) was introduced. While the simple HDI remains useful, it stated that "the IHDI is the actual level of human development (accounting for inequality)" and the "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)"

Methodology 

The UN report covers 185 member states of the United Nations (out of 193), along with Hong Kong and the Palestinian territories; 8 UN member states are not included because of lack of data. The average HDI of regions of the World and groups of countries are also included for comparison.

The Human Development Index (HDI) is a comparative measure of life expectancy, literacy, education, standards of living, and quality of life for countries worldwide. It is a standard means ofmeasuring well-being, especially child welfare. It is used to distinguish whether the country is a developed, a developing or an underdeveloped country, and also to measure the impact of economic policies on quality of life. The index was developed in 1990 by Pakistani economist Mahbub ul Haq and Indian economist Amartya Sen.

Countries fall into four broad human development categories, each of which comprises 47 countries: Very High Human Development, High Human Development, Medium Human Development and Low Human Development (46 countries in this category).

Because of the new methodology adopted since the 2010 Human Development Report, the new reported HDI figures appear lower than the HDI figures in previous reports.

From 2007 to 2010, the first category was referred to as developed countries, and the last three are all grouped in developing countries. The original "high human development" category has been split into two as above in the report for 2007.

Some older groupings (high/medium/low income countries) have been removed that were based on the gross domestic product (GDP) in purchasing power parity (PPP) per capita, and have been replaced by another index based on the gross national income (GNI) in purchasing power parity per capita.

The country with the largest decrease in HDI since 1998 is Zimbabwe, falling from 0.514 in 1998 by 0.140 to 0.374 in 2010. The country with the largest decrease since 2009 is Cape Verde, which decreased by 0.170.

Over half of the world's population live in countries with "medium human development" (51%), while less than a fifth (18%) populate countries falling in the "low human development" category. Countries with "high" to "very high" human development account for slightly less than a third of the world's total population (30%).

The only year without a Human Development Report since 1990 was 2012. The latest report was launched on 14 March 2013 in Mexico City.