Out of 189 countries, Bhutan ranks 134 on the Human Development Index (HDI) in 2017, climbing a step up from its 135 rank in 2016.
This has come to light after the release of the Human Development Indices and Indicators: 2018 Statistical Update which was released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) online on Monday.
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As per a report published by Kuensel, Bhutan’s HDI value at 0.612 puts the country in the medium human development category.
According to a press communique from the UN country office stated that Bhutan shares its rank with Kiribati. In South Asia, countries that are close to Bhutan in the 2017 HDI rank and to some extent in population size are the Maldives, which ranks 101 and Nepal, 149, it stated.
The release also stated that when the value is discounted for inequality, the HDI drops to 0.446, a loss of 27.2 per cent due to inequality in the distribution of the HDI dimension indices.
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On the other hand, the Maldives and Nepal show losses due to inequality of 23.4 per cent and 25.6 per cent respectively. It also stated that for South Asia, the average loss due to inequality for medium HDI countries is 25.1 pc and 26.1 pc.
Bhutan’s HDI value, in between 2005 and 2017, increased from 0.510 to 0.612, an increase of 20.1 pc on the other hand, in between 1990 and 2017, the life expectancy in Bhutan at birth increased by 17.7 years, mean years of schooling by 0.8 years, expected years of schooling by 6.9 years and GNI per capita by about 284.2 pc.
Bhutan has a Gender Inequality Index value of 0.476, ranking it 117 out of 160 countries in the 2017 index.
The country has 8.3 pc of parliamentary seats held by women, and 6 pc of adult women have reached at least a secondary level of education compared to 13.7 pc of their male counterparts.
For every 100,000 live births, 148 women die from pregnancy related causes. Female participation in the labour market is 58 percent compared to 74.3 for men. In comparison, Maldives ranks 76 and Nepal 118 on this index.