Human development at standstill in Mongolia

For the last couple of years, Mongolia has been consistently ranked in the lower side of countries with high human development in the UNDP’s Human Development Index (HDI). According to this year’s index update, Mongolia’s HDI value for 2017 is 0.741— which put the country in the high human development category — positioning it at 92 out of 189 countries and territories. The rank is shared with Fiji. Between 1990 and 2017, Mongolia’s HDI value increased from 0.579 to 0.741, an increase of 27.9 percent.

The index highlights that between 1990 and 2017, Mongolia’s life expectancy at birth increased by 9.2 years, mean years of schooling increased by 2.4 years and expected years of schooling increased by 5.3 years. Mongolia’s gross national income per capita increased by about 114.3 percent between 1990 and 2017.

Mongolia’s 2017 HDI of 0.741 is below the average of 0.757 for countries in the high human development group and above the average of 0.733 for countries in East Asia and the Pacific. From East Asia and the Pacific, countries which are close to Mongolia in 2017 HDI rank and to some extent in population size are Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan, which have HDIs ranked 122 and 108 respectively

In the latest HDI, countries leading the index were Norway, Switzerland, Australia, Ireland and Germany, while Niger, the Central African Republic, South Sudan, Chad and Burundi have the lowest scores in the HDI’s measurement of national achievements in health, education and income.

The index highlights that the overall trend globally is toward continued human development improvements, with many countries moving up through the human development categories: out of the 189 countries for which the HDI is calculated, 59 countries are today in the very high human development group and only 38 countries fall in the low HDI group. Just eight years ago in 2010, the figures were 46 and 49 countries respectively.