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This is a list of all countries by Human Development Index as included in a United Nations Development Program's Human Development Report released on 5 October 2009, compiled on the basis of data from 2007. It covers 180 UN member states (out of 192), along with Hong Kong (SAR of China) and the Palestinian territories. Twelve UN member states are not included due to lack of data. The average HDI of regions of the World and groups of countries are also included for comparison.
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The Human Development Index (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, 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 based on their HDI:
Starting in the report for 2007, the first category is referred to as developed countries, and the last three are all grouped in developing countries. The original "very high human development" (0.8 to 1) 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been removed that were based on the gross national income (GNI) in purchasing power parity (PPP) per capita, and have been replaced by another index based on the gross domestic product (GDP) in purchasing power parity per capita.