Which countries have the best, and worst, living standards?

T HE 2020s have brought a degree of chaos not seen in decades. A pandemic was followed by a full-scale war in Europe; both sent food and fuel prices surging. Extreme weather events have shown that climate change is beginning to bite. The phrase “unprecedented times” soon sounded worn and vacuous.

This all took a toll on global standards of living. One measure of this, the UN’s Human Development Index (HDI), fell in 2020 for the first time since its launch in 1990. It fell again in 2021. The HDI is one of the most widely used measures of countries’ development, after GDP. It gauges progress in terms of societal outcomes, including life expectancy at birth, expected and average years of schooling and gross national income per person. The latest figures, released on March 13th, show that the global HDI is rising again, but progress has been slow and uneven. Our table below shows how the 194 countries tracked by the UN compare.

Switzerland topped the charts for a second consecutive year. Its overall score is boosted by high incomes and long life expectancies. Other countries in western Europe have some of the highest scores. Some parts of Asia also do well, with Hong Kong and Singapore making it to the top ten. Elsewhere it is bleaker: countries such as Peru, Colombia, Libya and Lebanon have made little progress since 2019. Living standards in Ukraine and Russia have also dropped: the countries fell by 23 and four places respectively between 2021 and 2022. War-torn Yemen, poor and indebted Belize, and Micronesia, an island country at risk of being swallowed by rising sea levels, all peaked in 2010 and have declined every year since.

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