GCSE Geography | Human Development Index (Development Gap 4)

The Human Development Index (HDI) is a composite measurement of development - this means it takes a range of social and economic measures and combines them into one. This index is published by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and is was designed to reflect the idea that good human development involves people living long and healthy lives, being knowledgeable and having a decent standard of living - things that we often take for granted in HICs.

The HDI was developed to move away from assessing development on just economic growth alone - the HDI puts emphasis on the potential for people to improve their quality of life in a given country.

The HDI incorporates:

Wealth - using Gross National Income (GNI) per capita (as a measure of whether people have a decent standard of living).

Health - using life expectancy at birth (as a measure of whether people are living long and healthy lives).

Education - using expected years of schooling for children of school entering age, and mean years of schooling for adults aged 25 and over (as a measure of whether people are knowledgeable).

The index is calculated by bringing these values onto the same scale - which is a scale of 0 to 1. The indicators are then combined - firstly the mean is calculated of the two values that represent education, and then this value is added to the value attributed to wealth and health, where another average is taken - resulting in an overall index score between 0 and 1.

The UK has a HDI of 0.94 (based on 2024 data and is ranked 15th in the world.

The countries with the highest HDI scores currently are...

1. Switzerland (0.97)
2. Norway (0.96)
3. Iceland (0.9.59)
4. Hong Kong (0.956)
5. Denmark/Sweden (0.952)

The countries with the lowest HDI are...

1. Somalia (0.38)
2. South Sudan (0.381)
3. Central African Republic (0.387)
4. Niger (0.394)
5. Chad (0.394)

'Our World in Data' is a brilliant website for development data - click here to watch a timelapse of how HDI values have changed since 1990. The map also enables you to click on countries to see their individual HDI.