Subregional HDI of Asia

What are the most and least developed regions in Asia?

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The Human Development is a composite index by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)’s Human Development Report Office. It is used to measure a country’s development. The score is based on life expectancy, education and per capita income indicators.

The Human Development Index is normally calculated on the national level. The Global Data Lab of the Nijmegen Radboud University has calculated the HDI at the subnational level.

As we can see, Asia has some of the world’s most and least developed countries in the world. Overall, Asia looks fairly blue. The least developed areas in Asia are mostly in Yemen, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Haijah, Sa’dah, ‘Amran area in north-western Yemen is the least developed area in all of Asia. Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and Timor-Leste are also mostly orange and red.

The most developed place in Asia, is Hong Kong, with a score of 0.949. Other city states like Macau and Singapore also score quite high. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Israel are also one of the most developed countries in Asia. Saudi Arabia and the UAE

China is probably the country with the largest regional differences. Although places like Beijing and Shanghai score very high, most of China scores between 0.7 and 0.8. The more sparsely populated areas in western China score even lower, especially Tibet. The information that comes out of China is highly controlled and the image of China we often see is that of those darker blue area. But as you can see, that is only a small part of the country. Some small areas in China are indeed as developed as the most developed countries in the world, but China is not a developed country. As you can see, it still is a middle income country.