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This is a list of all the countries by the Human Development Index as included in a United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Report. The latest report was released on 14 December 2015 and compiled on the basis of estimates for 2014.
Contents
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 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 Human Development Index (HDI) is a composite statistic of life expectancy, education, and income per capita indicators. A country scores higher HDI when the life expectancy at birth is longer, the education period is longer, and the income per capita is higher. It is used to distinguish whether the country is a developed, a developing or an underdeveloped country. The index was developed in 1990 by Indian economist Amartya Sen and Pakistani economist Mahbub ul Haq 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.
Countries fall into four broad human development categories: Very High Human Development, High Human Development, Medium Human Development and Low Human Development.
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income countries) that were based on the gross domestic product (GDP) in purchasing power parity (PPP) per capita have been replaced by another index based on the gross national income (GNI) in purchasing power parity per capita.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.
The only year without a Human Development Report since 1990 was 2012. The latest report was launched in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on 14 December 2015.