Brazil climbs five spots, reaches 84th place in HDI ranking
The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) on Tuesday (May 6) released this year’s Human Development Report. The document updates the human development index (HDI) of 193 countries, based on 2023 indicators for life expectancy, education, and per-capita GDP.
Brazil ranks 84th, with an HDI of 0.786 (on a scale of zero to one), an index considered to be highly developed. Compared to 2022, the country’s HDI increased by 0.77 percent, as the index was 0.78 (adjusted this year).
The report also shows the country’s evolution from 2010 to 2023 (an average annual increase of 0.38 percent) and from 1990 to 2023 (0.62 percent).
Countries are divided into four groups according to their HDI. Those with a score above 0.800 are considered to have very high human development. Seventy-four nations are in this position. Chile is the country in the best position among the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean (45th place, with 0.878 points).
Nine other Latin American and Caribbean countries are in this group—Argentina, Uruguay, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Panama, Costa Rica, Bahamas, Barbados, and Trinidad and Tobago. On average, the region’s HDI rose from 0.778 in 2022 to 0.783 in 2023—an increase of 0.64 percent.
Score
In addition to Brazil, another 49 countries are considered to be highly developed (with a score of 0.700 to 0.799). Nations with medium development (0.550–0.699) number 43, while those with low development (below 0.550) number 26.
The average world HDI reached 0.756 in 2023, up 0.53 percent on last year (0.752). According to the report’s coordinator, Pedro Conceição, this is the highest level of human development since the survey began.
“There are two alarming aspects to this achievement. First is the fact that we are making slower progress. In fact, it’s the slowest progress in history if we don’t consider the period of decline in the HDI [due to the COVID-19 pandemic]. If we continued to have the progress we had before 2020, we would be living in a very high development index in 2030. But the trend now is that [progress] has flattened out a bit and this milestone of living on a very high human development index has been postponed for decades,” Conceição noted.
The second aspect, he went on, is that countries with a low HDI are falling behind. “[This has happened] for the fourth year running. It represents a break with a trend that had been going on for decades, in which we saw a convergence in the human development index among countries.”
