Human Development: Sri Lanka Beats India And China

The 2011 Human Development Index is out. What’s interesting is that inequality, especially gender inequality, has dragged India to the bottom of South Asia and the world in general. At the same time, however, “Sri Lanka has overtaken China on human development and with an HDI of 0.691, is now within touching distance of the “high human development” category” (Times Of India).

Human Development is a bit of a more relevant measure than, say, GDP. Raw income doesn’t really determine quality of life, something that HDI comes closer to capturing. It incorporates inputs from healthcare, education, inequality and sustainability, giving a broader view of quality of life. By that measure Sri Lanka is in the top 100 at number 97. China is at 101 and India is struggling with its huge population at 134.

The Times Of India mentions that Sri Lanka has overtaken China, but as far as I can tell, Sri Lanka was always ahead. Indeed, even throughout the war, we were blessed with low birth-rates, high education and decent healthcare. The story to me seems to be more China’s rise, with a substantially larger population, and India’s difficulty budging a similar mass.

Anyways, still going through the data, they’ve got some interesting data tools if you’d like to poke around.

3 Comments

  1. Thank you for the link, pretty interesting data.
    Looks like it is other way around about China. Perhaps next year, they will over take SL, unless SL do some rapid development work. Thinking about advancement, I was surprised to learn from Rajaratarala that there are graduates in SL who does not know how to use a computer. (I am sure they are not from Chavie’s school :) I know it is not a factor of HDI but it might help to push the HDI up.
    Two years ago, I took a long vacation in China. The cities were pretty developed and I even took a ride on then being developed high speed train. The scenario changes as soon as you hit the country side or rural areas, you wonder why the development or the money does not flow like water does. I thought Sri Lankans were much better off than those people.

    I also noticed that countries with higher Tax rates are on the top of the list (US is an exception)

  2. Ela ela :-p We do need more political empowerment of women though. Sri Lanka totally sucks in that regard.

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