Thaindian News

Islamabad, Feb 24(ANI): Pakistan has been ranked tenth in terms of Human Development Index improvement in the United Nations Development Programme’s 20th Human Development Report 2010.

The UNDP report said that the HDI value in Pakistan increased by 58 per cent (average annual increase of about 1.5 per cent) between 1980 and 2010.

“With such an increase Pakistan is ranked 10 in terms of HDI improvement, which measures progress in comparison to the average progress of countries with a similar initial HDI level,” The Express Tribune quoted the report, as saying.

Oman, which invested energy earnings over the decades in education and public health, topped the list of 135 countries that showed maximum improvement in HDI terms over the past 30 years.

The other nine “Top Movers” were China, Nepal, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Laos, Tunisia, South Korea, Algeria and Morocco.

Pakistan’s life expectancy at birth increased by more than 9 years, mean years of schooling increased by about 3 years and expected years of schooling grew by almost 4 years.

Pakistan’s per capita Gross National Income (GNI) increased by 92 per cent during the same period.

The report introduced the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), which identifies multiple deprivations in the same households in education, health and standard of living.

The average percentage of deprivation experienced by people in multidimensional poverty is 54 per cent.

The MPI, which denotes the share of the population that is multi-dimensionally poor, adjusted by the intensity of the deprivations, is 0.275 for Pakistan. India and Bangladesh have MPIs of 0.296 and 0.291 respectively. (ANI)