Where do data for HDI come from? What are the criteria for a country to be included in the HDI?
Currently, for various reasons, there still exist many data gaps in even some very basic areas of human development indicators. While actively advocating for the improvement of human development data, as a principle and for practical reasons, HDRO does not collect data directly from countries or make estimates to fill these data gaps in the Report. The one exception is the human development index (HDI). The Human Development Report Office strives to include as many UN member countries as possible in the HDI. For a country to be included, data ideally should be available from the relevant international data agencies for all four components of the index (the primary sources of data are the United Nations Population Division for life expectancy at birth, the UNESCO Institute for Statistics for the adult literacy rate and combined gross enrolment ratio for primary, secondary and tertiary schools and the World Bank for GDP per capita [PPP US$]). But for a significant number of countries dat
