Human Development Index: an Interactive Data Story from Our World in Data
The Human Development Index combines three things into a single score between 0 and 1: a long and healthy life, education, and a decent standard of living. It is published every year by the UN Development Programme and is the best-known alternative to ranking countries by GDP alone.
On this page the dataset is downloaded live from Our World in Data, straight into your browser, and turned into an interactive dashboard and a data story told as a bento grid. Nothing is uploaded to a server and nothing needs installing.
Interactive dashboard and data story
At a glance
| Indicator | Human Development Index |
| Unit | index |
| Coverage | yearly values from 1990 to the latest release |
| Highlighted entities | World, Norway, China, India, Niger |
| OWID chart id | human-development-index |
| Column | hdi__sex_total |
| Story format | Bento grid |
| Source | Our World in Data, CC BY 4.0 |
Why this dataset is told as a bento grid
Many short views side by side: the map, a beeswarm by region, who gained positions. A bento grid shows them all at once.
Every finding at once on a grid of tiles. Click a tile to open it full width. Datastripes can tell any dataset in eight formats: scrolling article, slide deck, conversation, newspaper front page, timeline, tap-through stories, quiz and bento grid. In automatic mode it picks one from the shape of the data. Here the format is fixed to the one that fits this indicator best. You can see every format side by side in the data story gallery.
Background
The HDI was created in 1990 by the economist Mahbub ul Haq with Amartya Sen, to shift attention from income to people’s capabilities. Since then nearly every country has improved its score, and the world average has risen by about a fifth.
Norway and Switzerland usually lead the ranking; Niger, Chad and South Sudan sit at the bottom. China has moved from low to high human development over the period, one of the largest improvements recorded.
How the indicator is measured
The index is the geometric mean of three normalised indices: life expectancy at birth; mean and expected years of schooling; and gross national income per capita at PPP, on a log scale. Using a geometric mean means a poor score in one dimension cannot be fully offset by a good score in another.
What to look for in the data
- Almost every country has a higher HDI today than in 1990.
- China’s gain over the period is among the largest in the world.
- Niger has improved but remains near the bottom of the ranking.
- The world average dipped in 2020 and 2021 for the first time, because of the pandemic.
Limits and caveats
- The UNDP revises the whole series each year, so values here may differ from older reports.
- The index leaves out inequality, the environment and political freedom; separate adjusted indices exist for some of these.
- Small differences between neighbouring countries in the ranking are not meaningful.
Who uses human development index data
- Development researchers and NGOs
- Students of international relations
- Policy analysts
- Journalists covering the annual Human Development Report
How to analyze this dataset yourself
- Open the data. Download the CSV from the Our World in Data chart and drop it into Datastripes. It loads in your browser, with no upload.
- Filter the entities. The file has one row per country and year. Filter the
entitycolumn to the countries or regions you care about, or usecode(for examplehdi) to pick out aggregates. - Pick a time window. Sort or filter on the time column to isolate a period, such as the years before and after a policy change.
- Join other indicators. Add a second OWID file, for example GDP or population, and join it on entity and year to look for relations.
- Forecast and simulate. Run a no-code forecast on any series, or build what-if scenarios on top of it.
- Publish a story. Turn your filtered table into a data story in any of the eight formats and embed it on your site with the Datastripes dashboard widget.
Related data stories
- Global Population: bento grid
- Urbanization Rates: scrolling article
- Global Literacy Rates: app
- Self-reported Happiness: quiz
- All data stories in the gallery
Frequently asked questions
What is a high HDI?
The UNDP calls 0.800 and above very high, 0.700–0.799 high, 0.550–0.699 medium and below 0.550 low.
Why not just use GDP?
GDP measures output. HDI adds health and education, which matter to people’s lives independently of income.
How often is the HDI updated?
Once a year, with the Human Development Report, which also revises past values.
Data: Our World in Data, published under CC BY 4.0, downloaded in your browser when you open this page. Datastripes is not affiliated with Our World in Data. Visualisations are generated automatically and may lag behind the latest OWID release by a few days.