ISLAMABAD – Pakistan dropped a spot to 152nd among 189 countries in the2019 Human Development Index, according to the United Nations DevelopmentProgramme (UNDP) report.
The UNDP launched the Human Development Report 2019 on Thursday. The UNDP’sHuman Development Report (HDR) “Beyond Income, Beyond Averages, BeyondToday: Inequalities in Human Development in the 21st Century” gave Pakistana score of 0.560.
Sri Lanka is ranked at 130th, Bhutan at 134th, India at 129th, Bangladeshat 135th, Nepal at 147th, Pakistan at 152nd and Afghanistan is ranked at170th on the list in South Asia.
This year’s report shows that a new generation of severe inequalities inhuman development is emerging, even as the gap is narrowing on many of theunresolved inequalities of the 20th century. These emerging dynamics underthe shadow of the climate crisis and technological change demand newapproaches in policies at national and global levels.
Sharing the findings of the report, Umer Malik said that Pakistan’s 2018HDI of 0.560 is below the average of 0.634 for countries in the mediumhuman development group and below the average of 0.642 for countries inSouth Asia. From South Asia, countries which are close to Pakistan in 2018HDI rank, and to some extent in population size, are Bangladesh and India,which have HDIs ranked 135th and 129th respectively.
Pakistan’s HDI for 2018 is 0.560. However, when the value is discounted forinequality, the HDI falls to 0.386, a loss of 31.1 percent due toinequality in the distribution of the HDI dimension indices.
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As the inequality in a country increases, the loss in human developmentalso increases, Malik added.
According to the data, Pakistan’s life expectancy stands at 67; while theexpected years of schooling is at 8.5 years, with the mean years ofschooling standing at 5.2. The country’s Gross National Income (GNI) percapita is $5,190, the data showed.
However, the trend from 1990 till 2018 showed that Pakistan had steadilyimproved from being a low human development country to a medium developmentcountry, but the pace is very slow.
The HDI was created to emphasize that people and their capabilities shouldbe the ultimate criteria for assessing the development of a country, noteconomic growth alone.
