Why is Albania's per capita GDP lower than China's, but its human development index higher than China's?
The previous article "The United Nations Releases the Latest Human Development Index Rankings, Is China Ranked High or Low?", mentioned that recently, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) released its annual flagship publication "Human Development Report 2023/24", which lists the Human Development Index (HDI) of 193 countries and regions, and China ranks 75th. In 74th place is Albania, which ranks one place higher than China. According to the World Bank's GDP per capita (current US$), Albania's per capita GDP in 2022 is only $6,803, and the Chinese's per capita GDP is $12,720. It can be seen that Albania's per capita GDP is lower than that of China.
Some netizens asked this question: "Why is Albania's per capita GDP lower than China's, but its human development index is higher than China's?"
As explained in the previous article, people usually use GDP per capita to express the level of economic development of a country, and the Human Development Index (HDI) is a comprehensive index covering social and economic aspects based on the three basic variables of "per capita national income (GNI), education level and life expectancy", according to a certain calculation method, in order to reflect a country's development level more comprehensively and scientifically. HDI scores range from 0 to 1, with higher scores indicating higher levels of development.
Specifically, the HDI score is calculated based on the following four basic data:
1. 人均预期寿命（Life Expectancy at birth）
2. （儿童）预期学校教育年数（Expected years of schooling）
3. （成年人）平均学校教育年数（Mean years of schooling）
4. 人均国民收入（Gross National Income per capita），以2017年PPP（购买力平价）调整的美元计。
According to the Human Development Report 2023/24, China's HDI score is 0.788, which is composed as follows: average life expectancy of 78.6 years, expected years of schooling of 15.2 years, average years of schooling of 8.1 years, and per capita national income of US$18,025.
Albania, on the other hand, has an HDI score of 0.789, which is composed as follows: average life expectancy of 76.8 years, expected years of schooling of 14.5 years, average schooling of 10.1 years, and per capita national income of $15,293.
It can be seen that although China's per capita life expectancy, expected years of schooling and per capita national income are higher than those of Albania, the average number of years of schooling is significantly lower than that of Albania. According to the HDI calculation method, Albania's HDI score is 0.001 points higher than China's.
Why is the average number of years of schooling in China only 8.1 years? The reason is that a large number of elderly people have only a primary school education, which has lowered the average number of years of schooling for the national population.
Attached: The HDI rankings and scores of 193 countries and regions are as follows:
