Barbados slips in human development rating
by Tony Best
Barbados may have “overcome” high levels of poverty but that hasn’t prevented it from falling a few more notches as the developing nation with the best human development record. In the latest United Nations Development Programmes’ annual rating, Barbados, while being praised for overcoming “severe levels of human poverty – deprivations in literacy, life expectancy and income,” has slipped from 24th last year to 29th in the world in the 1999 Human development Report. Back in 1993 Barbados was 20th in the world, but it has dropped in the global ranking on two occasions since then. In the latest ranking, Singapore – 28th last year, Hong Kong, 25th and Brunei Darussalam, 35th, surpassed Barbados for the first time. Cyprus, rated the best developing country last year, slipped three places and has given way to Singapore, Hong Kong and Brunei Darussalam. The Barbados Development Index has fallen steadily in the past five years, going from 0.902 in 1994 to 0.857 this year. One reason, said United Nations officials, was a change in the way the index was calculated. Another possible reason was that other countries were improving while Barbados might be standing still. A third was the lack of data in key categories The lack of statistics was particularly noticeable in areas of health, education, economic performance, and how the island was using its resources. For example, the report contained no data at all on Barbados’ macro-economic structure. It was one of the few countries without any statistics in that area. The survey goes beyond per capita income and measures such factors as life spans, literacy, child survival and other indices that tell a story about a country’s overall well-being. In this year’s report Canada remains the world leader in human development followed by Norway, the United States, Japan, Belgium, Sweden, Australia, Netherlands, Iceland and the United Kingdom in that order.
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