Quality-adjusted human development

The quality-adjusted human development challenge index measures shortfalls in achievements in healthy lives, quality education and equally distributed income. No region has a very low quality-adjusted human development challenge index, which means there is still much to be achieved even in the world’s most developed regions, North America and Europe and Central Asia. Sub-Saharan Africa faces very high challenges, followed by South Asia and the Arab region, which scored high and medium, respectively.

Within the index, the quality-adjusted education component has the most significant share in most regions, followed by the quality-adjusted income index. Since some countries in South Asia have improved their challenge scores from very high to high, the number of people living in very high-challenge countries has declined. The largest share of the world population now lives in countries with medium quality-adjusted human development challenges.