HDI

The Human Development Index (HDI) is a summary composite index that measures a country's average achievements in three basic aspects of human development: health, knowledge, and income. It was first developed by the late Pakistani economist Mahbub ul Haq with the collaboration of the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen and other leading development thinkers for the first Human Development Report in 1990. The breakthrough for the HDI was the creation of a single statistic which was to serve as a frame of reference for both social and economic development. It was introduced as an alternative to conventional measures of national development, such as level of income and the rate of economic growth.

HDI combine indicators of health, knowledge and income. Health is measured by life expectancy at birth. Measures achievement in knowledge by combining the expected years of schooling for a school-age child in a country today with the mean years of prior schooling for adults aged 25 and older. The income measurement consists of purchasing-power-adjusted per capita Gross National Income (GNI).

 Source: hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/hdi/

List of countries with the highest HDI and its components in 2010 are listed below.

RANK	COUNTRY	HDI value	Life expectancy at birth	Mean years of schooling	Expected years of schooling	Gross national income (GNI) per capita
1	Norway	0.938	81.0	12.6	17.3	58,810
2	Australia	0.937	81.9	12.0	20.5	38,692
3	New Zealand	0.907	80.6	12.5	19.7	25,438
4	United States	0.902	79.6	12.4	15.7	47,094
5	Ireland	0.895	80.3	11.6	17.9	33,078
6	Liechtenstein	0.891	79.6	10.3	14.8	81,011
7	Netherlands	0.890	80.3	11.2	16.7	40,658
8	Canada	0.888	81.0	11.5	16.0	38,668
9	Sweden	0.885	81.3	11.6	15.6	36,936
10	Germany	0.885	80.2	12.2	15.6	35,308
11	Japan	0.884	83.2	11.5	15.1	34,692
12	Korea	0.877	79.8	11.6	16.8	29,518
13	Switzerland	0.874	82.2	10.3	15.5	39,849
14	France	0.872	81.6	10.4	16.1	34,341
15	Israel	0.872	81.2	11.9	15.6	27,831
16	Finland	0.871	80.1	10.3	17.1	33,872
17	Iceland	0.869	82.1	10.4	18.2	22,917
18	Belgium	0.867	80.3	10.6	15.9	34,873
19	Denmark	0.866	78.7	10.3	16.9	36,404
20	Spain	0.863	81.3	10.4	16.4	29,661

Source: http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/HDR_2010_EN_Table1_reprint.pdf ,

While in the early 90's Japan was a on top of the list, at the end of the 90’s ranking was dominated by Canada. In the XXI century first place was almost constantly occupied by Norway (with a short break for Iceland).

In the following list you can compare countries with the highest GDP and their outcome in HDI ranking.

COUNTRY	GDP Rank	HDI Rank	HDI value	Average annual HDI growth rate (%)
	2010	2010	2010	2000 - 2010
United States	1	4	0.902	0.10
China	2	89	0.663	1.57
Japan	3	11	0.884	0.33
Germany	4	10	0.885	..
France	5	14	0.872	0.45
United Kingdom	6	26	0.849	0.31
Brazil	7	73	0.699	0.73
Italy	8	23	0.854	0.35
Canada	9	8	0.888	0.24
India	10	119	0.519	1.66
Russia	11	65	0.719	0.70
Spain	12	20	0.863	0.42
Australia	13	2	0.937	0.25
Mexico	14	56	0.750	0.73
South Korea	15	12	0.877	0.74
Netherlands	16	7	0.890	0.25
Turkey	17	83	0.679	0.76
Indonesia	18	108	0.600	1.82
Switzerland	19	13	0.874	0.18
Poland	20	41	0.795	0.54

Source: www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2011/01/weodata/weoselgr.aspx , hdr.undp.org/en/media/HDR_2010_EN_Table2_reprint.pdf

You can see full ranking of HDI 2010 and HDI trends in 1980 – 2010 on the following links:

- http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/HDR_2010_EN_Table1_reprint.pdf

- http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/HDR_2010_EN_Table2_reprint.pdf