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Graphic detail | Global development
Which countries have the best, and
worst, living standards?
Data show progress worldwide may have suffered a permanent setback
Mar 13th 2024 ShareHE 2020S have brought a degree of chaos not seen in decades. A pandemic
was followed by a full-scale war in Europe; both sent food and fuel prices
surging. Extreme weather events have shown that climate change is beginning to
bite. The phrase “unprecedented times” soon sounded worn and vacuous.
This all took a toll on global standards of living. One measure of this, the UN’s
Human Development Index (HD)), fell in 2020 for the first time since its launch
in 1990, It fell again in 2021. The HDI is one of the most widely used measures of
countries’ development, after GDP. It gauges progress in terms of societal
outcomes, including life expectancy at birth, expected and average years of
schooling and gross national income per person. The latest figures, released on
March 13th, show that the global HDI is rising again, but progress has been slow
and uneven. Our table below shows how the 194 countries tracked by the UN
compare.
Switzerland topped the charts for a second consecutive year. Its overall score is
boosted by high incomes and long life expectancies. Other countries in western
Europe have some of the highest scores. Some parts of Asia also do well, with
Hong Kong and Singapore making it to the top ten. Elsewhere it is bleaker:
countries such as Peru, Colombia, Libya and Lebanon have made little progress
since 2019. Living standards in Ukraine and Russia have also dropped: the
countries fell by 23 and four places respectively between 2021 and 2022. War-torn
Yemen, poor and indebted Belize, and Micronesia, an island country at risk of
being swallowed by rising sea levels all peaked in 2010 and have declined everybeing swallowed by rising sea levels, all peaked in 2010 and have declined every
year since.
The index is a useful, but incomplete, measure. It does not account for economic
inequality, for example, or disparities between ethnicities and genders. (The UN
now produces separate indices that include some of these measures.)
But it does provide a consistent measure for policymakers and NGOS. Its regional
projections for 2023 show that living standards are set to rise further still; only the
Arab world will not have fully rebounded to its score in 2019. Nevertheless the
long-term trend appears to have suffered a permanent setback since the
pandemic (see chart 1). The value for 2022 and projection for 2023 suggests that
development may be stuck on a course below the pre-2019 trend, which had held
strong since 1999.
Offtrack
Human Development Index, global average
This setback will affect the world’s
poorest the hardest. Across the OECD,
‘t=most developed a club of rich countries, HDI values
076 have recovered to or surpassed pre-
Pre-2019 trend.” gg“ Pandemic levels. But that is true for
o72 less than half of the world’s least-
‘Actual a8 developed countries. For 20 years the
gap between countries with the
highest and lowest HDI values had
066 narrowed (except for a brief period
064 around the financial crash of 2007-09).
2000 08 10 6 20 23° But since 2020 it has widened.
0.68
ce: United Nations
Yet there are reasons for hope. The
chaos of the 2020s has also shown that
governments can collaborate on some
big issues. During the pandemic, vaccines were developed, produced and
distributed at remarkable speed, saving an estimated 20m lives in their first year
alone. At COP28 last year the world proved that it could agree on a deal to tackle
climate change (even if fulfilling it is another matter). More of that will be needed
to overcome the setbacks from the start of the decade
IMAGE: THF FCONOMISTTHE ECONOMISTTODAY