Human Development Index in Europe

[Brás Garcia de Mascarenhas]

The Human Development Index (HDI) measures each country's social and economic development by focusing on the following four factors: mean years of schooling, expected years of schooling, life expectancy at birth, and gross national income (GNI) per capita.

To the best of my knowledge, this is the most recent data available. Some personal observations:

• All countries in Europe have either high (above 0.7) or very high (above 0.8) human development;
• The podium consists of Switzerland, Norway, and Iceland. Not only are they the most humanely developed countries in Europe, they are also the most humanly developed in the world;
• Ireland is closer to Scandinavian, Benelux and German levels than the U.K.;
• Spain has overtaken France and distances itself more from Italy;
• Portugal had an increase of 0.35% over the previous year but is still out of step with the rest of Western Europe, being more on par with former Communist states that have since joined the EU.
• The Balkan region has the largest regional discrepancies;
• Slovenia, Greece and Croatia lead their respective region.
• Albania and Serbia are ahead of Bulgaria, a member of the European Union since 2007;
• Montenegro is ahead of Romania, a country that has made remarkable progress in recent years;
• Germany (-0.21%), Czech Republic (-0.34%), Slovakia (-1.05%), Lithuania (-0.46%), Latvia (-0.82%), Estonia (-0.22%), Russia (-0.96%), Ukraine (-0.26%), Bosnia (-0.13%), Romania (-0.36%), Macedonia (-0.52%) and Bulgaria (-0.87%) are the countries that have regressed in relation to the previous year.
• Belgium (+0.97%) and France (+0.78%) were the countries that have improved the most in percentage relative to the previous year.
• Poland is the only country that has stagnated in relation to the previous year, neither regressing nor progressing.

Source: https://wisevoter.com/country-rankings/hdi-by-country/

Comments and further observations welcome.

[Brás Garcia de Mascarenhas]

I leave here something more subjective, based on the general opinion of citizens, to analyse with the other data. Unfortunately it does not cover all countries.

[Blondie]

I doubt these are real.

1. In the first map Slovenia has better HDI than Austria, it cannot be true.

2. In the second map, the difference between south and north Italy is not much, in the reality the difference is very big.

3. I dont think that czechs have better quality of life than spaniards or some part of east Poland is on same level with west Germany.

[Alenka]

I doubt these are real.

1. In the first map Slovenia has better HDI than Austria, it cannot be true.

2. In the second map, the difference between south and north Italy is not much, in the reality the difference is very big.

3. I dont think that czechs have better quality of life than spaniards or some part of east Poland is on same level with west Germany.

Slovenia does have a higher HDI than Austria. But to be fair, it only recently surpassed it, and the difference isn't big:
https://globaldatalab.org/shdi/table...xtrapolation=0

[Brás Garcia de Mascarenhas]

I doubt these are real.

1. In the first map Slovenia has better HDI than Austria, it cannot be true.

And why couldn't Slovenia have a higher human development index than Austria? I don't get it.

2. In the second map, the difference between south and north Italy is not much, in the reality the difference is very big.

3. I dont think that czechs have better quality of life than spaniards or some part of east Poland is on same level with west Germany.

The second map is about the judgment that people have regarding their life quality. People from more impoverished areas may enjoy their quality of life regardless and others from more developed areas may not like it so much. In Portugal the most developed region (Lisbon Metropolitan area) is where people seem to like their quality of life the least according to this survey.

[Jana]

1. In the first map Slovenia has better HDI than Austria, it cannot be true.

It can. Been to both recently. Slovenia is basically like Austria (it's still less developed yes, but not by much), but without Austria's problems.
Austria has non European immigration and all that goes with it out of control. Their quality of life is greatly reduced due to that.

I'd chose Slovenia for living above AT any day.

Slovenia is already among European countries with highest QOL overall IMO.

[Alenka]

It can. Been to both recently. Slovenia is basically like Austria (it's still less developed yes, but not by much), but without Austria's problems.
Austria has non European immigration and all that goes with it out of control. Their quality of life is greatly reduced due to that.

I'd chose Slovenia for living above AT any day.

Slovenia is already among European countries with highest QOL overall IMO.

Yes and no. This is partly true.

The HDI is a score based on considering 3 dimensions: health index, education index, and income index.
Click here to see the exact formulas.

Austria still has a much more developed income index than Slovenia (0.949 vs 0.904), and it also has a little bit more developed health index (0.947 vs 0.934). But Austria's education index is much less developed than Slovenia's (0.853 vs 0.917).
https://globaldatalab.org/shdi/table...xtrapolation=0

In other words, Austria and Slovenia are comparably developed only as a rather artificial sum of these three dimentions (0.916 vs 0.918), but when you consider the details there's actually key differences between the two. Slovenia has had a more developed education index than Austria ever since 2002 already, but only improving in the two other spheres, of income and health, has allowed it to surpass Austria now.

Still, it's only the education index that is really tipping the scale in Slovenia's favour.
Austria remains much more developed when it comes to the income index.

[Jana]

Yes and no. This is partly true.

The HDI is a score based on considering 3 dimensions: health index, education index, and income index.
Click here to see the exact formulas.

Austria still has a much more developed income index than Slovenia (0.949 vs 0.904), and it also has a little bit more developed health index (0.947 vs 0.934). But Austria's education index is much less developed than Slovenia's (0.853 vs 0.917).
https://globaldatalab.org/shdi/table...xtrapolation=0

In other words, Austria and Slovenia are comparably developed only as a rather artificial sum of these three dimentions (0.916 vs 0.918), but when you consider the details there's actually key differences between the two. Slovenia has had a more developed education index than Austria ever since 2002 already, but only improving in the two other spheres, of income and health, has allowed it to surpass Austria now.

Still, it's only the education index that is really tipping the scale in Slovenia's favour.
Austria remains much more developed when it comes to the income index.

Very interesting. You can earn much more in Austria, that's the biggest difference IMO (and Slovenia isn't much cheaper for living, at least groceries and such stuff isn't, flats probably are).
But overall Slovenia is fantastic IMO.

If feels closer to Austria in development than to Croatia, or Hungary.

But yes, even in border regions there are differences. When I crossed from rural Austrian Styria to Slovenia, it was more chaotic and less orderly a bit in SLO
Despite that to me Slovenia north of Ljubljana feels super developed and very close to Austrian level, basically language is only difference one can feel.

Slovenia near my part of Croatia feels different. It's much more remote and feels poorer, more isolated and even looks very different. I don't mean the coast, but area near Pivka and Ilirska Bistrica - looks way closer to interior Kvarner/Primorje region than to Austria. Development wise too.

But larger cities in AUT are hellholes that are unimaginable in SLO. Been to Graz and it seemed 1/3 of city population consisted of MENA migrants, quite a few women in burqa, it was shocking.

I feel sLOVEnia

[Tooting Carmen]

I don't mean to be a party pooper regarding the Irish, but the reason why their HDI is somewhat higher than the UK's nowadays is principally because of Dublin, which is a very expensive city and it is where around one-quarter of the Republic's population live. Take that out and the difference becomes a lot smaller. More generally, smaller countries where a high percentage of the population live in just one city often come out more favourably because said city is usually rather more developed than the rest of the country, whereas in larger countries the population is usually much more defuse between rural and urban areas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...elopment_Index
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...elopment_Index

This being said, Ireland's economic transformation since the 1980's, largely thanks to IT and finance, has indeed been extraordinary. I am not joking when I say this, but before the 1980's the Irish Republic's economy, not just per capita but in overall size was poorer than Wales', whereas nowadays it is very much the other way round.

[Brás Garcia de Mascarenhas]

I don't mean to be a party pooper regarding the Irish, but the reason why their HDI is somewhat higher than the UK's nowadays is principally because of Dublin, which is a very expensive city and it is where around one-quarter of the Republic's population live. Take that out and the difference becomes a lot smaller. More generally, smaller countries where a high percentage of the population live in just one city often come out more favourably because said city is usually rather more developed than the rest of the country, whereas in larger countries the population is usually much more defuse between rural and urban areas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...elopment_Index
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...elopment_Index

This being said, Ireland's economic transformation since the 1980's, largely thanks to IT and finance, has indeed been extraordinary. I am not joking when I say this, but before the 1980's the Irish Republic's economy, not just per capita but in overall size was poorer than Wales', whereas nowadays it is very much the other way round.

Ireland has historically been one of the poorest countries in Europe for as long as we can remember, so it is quite extraordinary indeed. Same with Finland, the region has always been poor and desolate historically, less than a hundred years ago Portugal (which was a poor country too) was sending humanitarian aid to them.