News

Lithuania ranks as #35 in the UN Human Development Index (HDI) list and has firmly established herself in the very high human development category, states the Human Development Report 2014, published by the UN Development Program last week (July 24). With a score of 0.834 Lithuania has moved one notch higher than in 2013 and reached the topmost position since the reestablishment of independence in 1990.

The growth of GDP per capita income (from $9,070 in 1995 to $23,740 in 2013) has been the major driving force behind this impressive change. But Lithuania’s progress in other areas like life expectancy at birth and schooling conditions has been no less important.

Lithuania’s European and Euro-Atlantic integration has obviously played a positive role in the acceleration of the country’s human development conditions. For example, those nations from the region which have chosen reforms and the membership of the EU and NATO today belong to the very high human development category (Lithuania HDI 0.737 in 1990, 0.834 in 2013; Latvia 0.710 to 0.810, Estonia 0.730 to 0.840 respectively).

Meanwhile, countries which have followed their autonomous path have improved their HDI only with a limited success (Russia 0.729 to 0.778, Belarus 0.725 to 0.786) and 24 years past remain in the lower category of high human development (i.e. below 0.800).

Human Development Index is a composite statistics of life expectancy, education, and income indices used to rank world nations into four tiers of human development.It was created by an Indo-Pakistani scientific duo in 1990 and is published by the UN Development Program on an annual basis.

Source: Human Development Report 2014