List of countries by 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 (released on 15 December 2020), put together based on estimates for 2019. It covers 187 member states of the United Nations (out of 193), along with Hong Kong (of the People's Republic of China), and the Palestinian territories; 6 UN member states are not included because there is not enough 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 and standards of living for countries worldwide. It is a standard way of measuring well-being, especially child welfare. It is used to distinguish whether the country is a developed, a developing or an under-developed country, and also to measure the effect of economic policies on quality of life. The index was developed in 1990 by Pakistani economist Mahbub ul Haq^[1] and Indian economist Amartya Sen.^[2]

Countries fall into four wide human development categories: Very High Human Development (66 countries), High Human Development (53 countries), Medium Human Development (37 countries) and Low Human Development (36 countries).

From 2007 to 2010, the first two categories was referred to as developed countries, and the last two 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 have been removed were based on the gross domestic product (GDP) in purchasing power parity (PPP) per capita, and have been replaced by another index based on the gross national income (GNI) in purchasing power parity per capita.

1. ↑ "History of the Human Development Report". United Nations Development Programme. Archived from the original on 25 December 2018. Retrieved 26 March 2009.
2. ↑ "The Human Development concept". UNDP. 2010. Retrieved 29 July 2011.