Bangladesh has improved its Human Development Index ranking by 2 notches in the recently released report by the UNDP.According to the HDI 2020 for Bangladesh released on Monday, Bangladesh now stands at 133rd position out of 189 countries. In South Asia, it remains in the 5th position out of 8 countries included in the report. However, the country also improved its ranking by 9 places in the planetary pressure-adjusted Human Development Index.
In the 2020 edition of the report, UNDP has added two more elements in the calculation of the HDI. It now takes into account the Carbon Dioxide emission of the country and its material footprint in addition to the earlier included health, education, and living standards based parameters. The inclusion of these new parameters has resulted in 50 countries dropping out of the very high human development group, reflecting their dependence on fossil fuels and material footprint.
According to the latest HDI, Bangladesh has now entered into the medium Human Development category. Its HDI score for 2019 was 0.632 which is 60 percent higher compared to 1990. The country has also shown improvement in life expectancy over the last 3 decades since 1990. The life expectancy in the country has grown by over 14 years between 1990-2019.
The mean years of schooling in Bangladesh increased by 3.4 years, and expected years of schooling increased by 6.0 years. Bangladesh’s GNI per capita has also increased by about 220.1 percent between 1990 and 2019.
