Guyana gains in latest UN human development index

Guyana has moved up two places on the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Index (HDI), where it now ranks 123rd of 189 countries.

With its ranking in the latest HDI, which was released yesterday and presents 2018 values and ranks, Guyana remains in the Medium Human Development group of countries but is the second lowest ranked CARICOM member, ahead of only Haiti, which is in the Low Human Development group.

According to the HDI, Guyana has a value of 0.670, with an average life expectancy of 69.8 years, an average of 11.5 expected years of schooling, and a Gross National Income of 7,615 per capita expressed in constant 2011 international dollars, converted using purchasing power parity (PPP) rates.

Norway, which is in the Very High Human Development group, tops the index with a value of 0.954, while Niger is at the bottom, with a value of 0.377.

The UNDP website explains that the HDI is a summary measure of average achievement in key dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, being knowledgeable and have a decent standard of living. The HDI, it adds, is the geometric mean of normalised indices for each of the three dimensions. “The health dimension is assessed by life expectancy at birth, the education dimension is measured by mean of years of schooling for adults aged 25 years and more and expected years of schooling for children of school entering age. The standard of living dimension is measured by gross national income per capita. The HDI uses the logarithm of income, to reflect the diminishing importance of income with increasing GNI. The scores for the three HDI dimension indices are then aggregated into a composite index using geometric mean,” it adds.

The full report can be downloaded at: http://hdr.undp.org/en/2019-report/download