Malaysia ranks 64 in UNDP Human Development Index

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KUALA LUMPUR:  Malaysia is ranked 64th out of 187 countries surveyed under the Human Development Index (HDI) last year, according to the 2013 Human Development Report (HDR) of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

In a statement today, the UNDP said Malaysia’s HDI of 0.769 was above the average of 0.758 for countries in the high human development category, and above the average of 0.683 for countries in East Asia and the Pacific.

With this rank, Malaysia is well ahead of Thailand (103), the Philippines (114), Indonesia (121) and Turkey (90), despite trailing the Republic of Korea (12), Singapore (18) and Brunei (30), all of which were in the very high human development category.

Although the rank was slightly lower than 2011 where Malaysia was ranked 61, the statement explained that it was inaccurate to make comparison because of changes in the underlying data and method mentioned.

Between 1980 and 2012, Malaysia’s HDI value had increased from 0.563 to 0.769, an increase of 37 per cent, representing an average annual increase of about one per cent.

In these years, Malaysia’s Gross National Income per capita had increased by about 191 per cent and saw life expectancy at birth increase from 7.1 years.

On the other hand, ranking at 42 out of 148, Malaysia also fared better in comparison with Thailand (56), the Philippines (77), Indonesia (106) and Turkey(68), in terms of Gender Inequality Index (GII).

Nevertheless, it stated that Malaysia still had room for improvement in some aspects of GII, among others, on parliamentary seats whereby, only 13.2 per cent of them were held by women.

Other than that, it stated that there were 66 per cent of adult women who had reached secondary or higher level education as compared to their male counterparts, whilst there were only 43.8 per cent female participation in the labour market.

2013 HDR ‘The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World’ was launched in Mexico City yesterday. — BERNAMA