Human Development Since 1990

When UNDP published its first Human Development Report in 1990, almost 60 percent of the world lived in countries with low human development. Since then, a lot has changed.

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The Human Development Index (HDI) is a summary measure of achievements in three key dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, access to knowledge, and a decent standard of living. The HDI is the geometric mean of normalized indices for each of the three dimensions. HDI classifications are based on fixed cutoff points, which are derived from the three component indicators. The cutoff points are HDI less than .550 for low human development, .550 - .699 for medium human development, .700 - .799 for high human development, and .800 or greater for very high human development.

In 1990, the global HDI value was .598, which would have classified the world as a "medium" human development entity. By 2017, the global HDI had risen to .728. Scroll down to see the evolution of the HDI across the world over the past three decades.

In the figure on the right, each slice's innermost band represents the population in that human development category, and the height of the slice reflects its HDI value.

In 1990, well over half the world lived in low HDI countries, while the very high grouping included only a subset of countries in Northern Europe and North America, as well as Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. Additionally, as the index had only just been introduced, there were many countries all over the world where the data simply wasn't available.

The initial five year period following the establishment of the first Human Development Report in 1990 produced some noteworthy trends across both HDI groups and geographical regions. The total population of the low HDI category dropped by over a billion people globally, in part thanks to China’s move up to medium HDI. This period in the early 1990s is also notable due to political developments across the European continent.

Within the same time period as the establishment of the European Union, countries of Northern and Western Europe, such as Denmark, the United Kingdom, Finland, Luxembourg, France, Spain, and Italy all saw themselves move up to the very high HDI category. In Eastern Europe, dissolution of the Soviet Union alongside conflict from the Yugoslav Wars saw the decline in HDI across countries such as Lithuania, Armenia, and Moldova. In particular, Serbia, Latvia, Romania and Ukraine all moved down from high HDI to medium HDI.

The run up to the new millennium is remarkable in regards to the continued growth of countries and populations now classified by either medium, high, or very high HDI. The most notable regional development of the late 1990s was in Latin America and the Caribbean, where Mexico, Costa Rica, and Panama moved up to the high HDI category, and Guyana, Nicaragua and Honduras moved up to medium HDI. Most of the Eastern European countries that had fallen previously from 1990 - 1995 returned to the high HDI category alongside Croatia and Bulgaria.

The turn of the millennium and the early years of the 21st Century were distinct in terms of human development by the growth of the two highest levels of HDI. Newly-minted European Union member-states such as Czechia, Malta, Estonia, Poland, Lithuania, and Hungary all moved up to very high HDI status. Progress was not only bounded to continental Europe; the island states of Bahrain, Cuba, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, St. Lucia, and the Dominican Republic progressed to high HDI. The start of the 21st Century also issued in more robust statistics; as national and international agencies continually improve their data series and collection, the data including the HDI values and population numbers has enabled researchers and policymakers to have a more complete and accurate picture of global development across time and geographic space.

2005 to 2010 was transformative in terms of global human development as since the establishment of the first report in 1990, this period marked the first time in which the low HDI category now made up the lowest share of the global population across the four HDI groups. The decrease in low HDI can be partially contributed to India, home to the world’s second largest population, and their move up to medium HDI.

Additionally, this period is characterized by the impressive growth of the high HDI category. In total, 16 countries moved from medium HDI to high HDI, including China and several Central Asian countries such as the Caucasus states of Azerbaijan and Armenia, and nearby Turkey and Iran.

2010 to 2015 is distinguishable in regards to the continued reduction of low HDI’s share of the global population. Countries in South and Southeast Asia, including Bangladesh, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Cambodia, Nepal and Pakistan all moved from low HDI to medium HDI. Concurrently, several states in Sub-Saharan Africa, comprising Kenya, Eswatini, Zambia and Angola made progress and moved up to medium HDI. For all the tremendous progress that has been made in the past 25 years up to this point, human development is not always linear. The deleterious effect of conflict occurring in Syrian Arab Republic, Libya, and Yemen precipitated steep declines in those nations’ respective HDIs, and Syria moved down to the low grouping.

Comparing the figure from 2017 with its 1990 counterpart shows that remarkable progress has been made in Human Development since the index was introduced. The number of people living in low HDI countries is now under one billion despite rapid population growth in those countries. It's not all good news, however, as the HDIs for many Sub-Saharan African countries remain stubbornly low, and progress among many medium HDI countries has stagnated in the last several years. Successful completion of SDGs 1 (No Poverty), 3 (Good Health and Well-being), and 4 (Quality Education) will most likely entail the near-elimination of the low HDI category (which has grown slightly in proportion to the others since 2015 due to population growth) and it is clear that to make this happen a vast amount of work still needs to be done.