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Human development indices
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Radr’s guid
Human development indices
Te human development indices provide anassessment o country achievements in dierentareas o human development. Where possible thetables include data or 192 UN member statesalong with Hong Kong, Special AdministrativeRegion o China, and the Occupied Palestinianerritories. Because o insucient cross-nation-ally comparable data o good quality, the HDIhas only been calculated or 177 UN membercountries plus the two areas mentioned.In the tables, countries and areas are rankedby their HDI value. o locate a country in thetables, reer to the
Key to countries
on the in-side back cover where countries with their HDIranks are listed alphabetically. Most o the datain the tables are or 2006 and are those avail-able to the Human Development Report Oce(HDRO) as o 28 November 2008, unlessotherwise specied.
Sources and defnitions
HDRO is primarily a user, not a producer, o statistics. It relies on international data agencies with the mandate, resources and expertise tocollect and compile international data on spe-cic statistical indicators. Sources or all dataused in compiling the indicator tables are givenin short citations at the end o each table. Tesecorrespond to ull reerences in the
Reerences
. Inorder to ensure that all calculations can be easilyreplicated the source notes also show the origi-nal data components used in any calculationsby HDRO. Indicators or which short, mean-ingul denitions can be given are included in
Denitions o statistical terms
. Other relevantinormation appears in the notes at the end o each table. For more detailed technical inorma-tion about these indicators, please consult therelevant websites o the source agencies throughthe
Human Development Report
website athttp://hdr.undp.org/statistics/
Inconsistencies between nationaland international estimates
When compiling international data series, inter-national data agencies ofen apply internationalstandards and harmonization procedures toimprove comparability across countries. Wheninternational data are based on national statis-tics, as they usually are, national data may needto be adjusted. When data or a country aremissing, an international agency may producean estimate i other relevant inormation canbe used. And because o the diculties in coor-dination between national and internationaldata agencies, international data series may notincorporate the most recent national data. Allthese actors can lead to substantial dierencesbetween national and international estimates. When data inconsistencies have arisen,HDRO has helped to link national and inter-national data authorities to address those incon-sistencies. In many cases this has led to betterstatistics becoming available. HDRO continuesto advocate improving international data and plays an active role in supporting eorts to en-hance data quality. It works with national agen-cies and international bodies to improve dataconsistency through more systematic reporting and monitoring o data quality.
Country classifcations
Countries are classied in our ways: by humandevelopment level, by income, by major worldaggregates and by region. Tese designations do
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