Human development index how many countries

For most of human history , our ancestors were stuck in a world of poor health, hunger and little access to formal education.

Economic growth — particularly over the past few centuries — has allowed some part of the world population to break out of these conditions.

You find more research in our entry on Economic Growth. There is a very strong correlation with richer countries having a higher HIHD. This is partly the case because average income is itself one of the three dimensions measured by the HDI and partly because the other two dimensions — good education and good health — are correlated with GDP per capita.

Because average income is itself one of the three dimensions measured by the HDI it makes sense to study the correlation without income as part of the composite index. Countries which lie below or closer to the grey line which indicates equal parity between these measures , have achieved improvements in these measures of development health and education with lower levels of GDP per capita relative to countries further from the line.

Overall, there is a strong correlation between the HDI measured with and without GDP per capita as an additional metric. The Human Development Index HDI provides a single index measure to capture three key dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, access to knowledge and a decent standard of living.

Values of each of the four metrics are first normalized to an index value of 0 to 1. With the actual value for a given country, and the global maximum and minimum, the dimension indices value for each metric is calculated as:. The dimension index is therefore 1 in a country that achieves the maximum value and it is 0 for a country that is at the minimum value.

Once each of the individual indices have been calculated, they are aggregated to calculate the HDI. The HDI is calculated as the geometric mean equally-weighted of life expectancy, education, and GNI per capita, as follows:. The education dimension is the arithmetic mean of the two education indices mean years of schooling and expected years of schooling.

It provides an indexed measure across the same three dimensions: a long and healthy life, access to knowledge and a decent standard of living. Show Sources. Human Development Index. Saint Vincent And The Grenadines. The Irish have a life expectancy of Two of the chief contributors to some countries performing badly in the HDI were, according to the report, gender inequality and armed conflicts.

Current rates of human development progress indicate it could take more than years to close the global economic gender gap. According to the Thomson Reuters Foundation , ensuring that girls have access to education is one of the best ways to open up sustainable economic opportunities and improve living standards.

Selim Jahan, lead author of the HDI report, said this calls for a crackdown on problems such as child marriage, low levels of asset ownership among women and male-dominated political structures. War and armed conflict has almost become the norm in some parts of the world, and has led to some countries falling down the HDI rankings. This illustrates how the daily lives and future aspirations of people caught up in conflict are being held back, and in some cases permanently put on hold.

Economic opportunities and average life expectancy are both likely to suffer in these cases, and the overall harm done could take many years to fix. Although the picture is not uniform, the countries in the very high HDI category are also among the most polluting. All three steepest declines in human development ranking were countries in conflict: the Syrian Arab Republic had the largest decrease in HDI rank, falling 27 places, followed by Libya 26 places , and Yemen 20 places.

Movements in the HDI are driven by changes in health, education and income. Health has improved considerably as shown by life expectancy at birth which has increased by almost seven years globally, with Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia showing the greatest progress, each experiencing increases of about 11 years since Average HDI levels have risen significantly since — 22 percent globally and 51 percent in least developed countries — reflecting that on average people are living longer, are more educated and have greater income.

A child born today in Norway, the country with the highest HDI, can expect to live beyond 82 years old and spend almost 18 years in school. While a child born in Niger, the country with the lowest HDI, can expect only to live to 60 and spend just five years in school.

Such striking differences can be seen again and again. While significant inequality occurs in many countries, including in some of the wealthiest ones, on average it takes a bigger toll on countries with lower human development levels.

Low and medium human development countries lose respectively 31 and 25 percent of their human development level from inequality, while for very high human development countries, the average loss is 11 percent.

One key source of inequality within countries is the gap in opportunities, achievements and empowerment between women and men.