Human Development Index
What you should know about this indicator
- Each of the dimensions of the HDI is measured with four indicators: a long and healthy life is measured by life expectancy at birth, good education (knowledge) is measured by two indicators, expected and mean years of schooling; and a decent standard of living is measured by Gross National Income (GNI) per capita, logarithmized to reflect that incomes become less important as they increase.
- The index is then calculated by normalizing and aggregating the indicators. First, the indicators are brought onto the same scale, ranging from 0 to 1. This is done by setting minimum and maximum values for each indicator, and a country at or below the minimum value receiving a score of 0, and a country at or above the maximum value receiving a score of 1.
- The minimum and maximum values for each indicator are defined as follows: Life expectancy at birth ranges between 20 and 85 years; expected years of schooling between 0 and 18 years; mean years of schooling, between 0 and 15 years; and GNI per capita between 100 and 75,000 international-$ at 2017 prices.
- The HDI is then estimated as the geometric mean of these indices, or HDI = (Health index * Education index * Income index)^(1/3). The education index is the arithmetic mean (average) of the mean years of schooling and expected years of schooling.
Related research and writing
Sources and processing
This data is based on the following sources
How we process data at Our World in Data
All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.
At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.
Notes on our processing step for this indicator
- We calculated averages over continents and income groups by taking the population-weighted average of the countries in each group. If less than 80% of countries in an area report data for a given year, we do not calculate the average for that area.
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Citations
How to cite this page
To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:
“Data Page: Human Development Index”, part of the following publication: Bastian Herre and Pablo Arriagada (2023) - “The Human Development Index and related indices: what they are and what we can learn from them”. Data adapted from UNDP, Human Development Report. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/human-development-index [online resource]
How to cite this data
In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:
UNDP, Human Development Report (2024) – with minor processing by Our World in Data
Full citation
UNDP, Human Development Report (2024) – with minor processing by Our World in Data. “Human Development Index” [dataset]. UNDP, Human Development Report, “Human Development Report 2023-2024” [original data]. Retrieved November 6, 2024 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/human-development-index