The Philippines and the UN's HDI 2009

Is it possible to array the "human development" of different countries along a single continuum? Can you rank different countries in terms of their "human development"? Can you summarize the "human development" of a particular country using a single number? If such things seem possible to you, is doing so desirable or dangerous? Is such an enterprise meaningful or misguided?

Whatever you think, it's clear what the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) thinks. Yesterday, it released its annual Human Development Report, which contains its Human Development Index, last calculated for 2007.

I won't go into the wonky details about the calculations. Let me simply note today that the Philippines comes in at #105, right behind Algeria and just ahead of El Salvador. This puts the Philippines in the "Medium human development" category. You can find the full rankings in the summary of the report.

Other southeast Asian countries in the same category include Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Cambodia. After a quick glance at the summary, it seems that Singapore ("Very high human development") is the highest ranked country in the region, followed by Malaysia ("high human development"). Norway leads all countries, and the United States is thirteenth.