The UNDP released its new report concerning the updated Human Development Indices and Indicators in more than 189 countries.
1-Human Development Index (HDI).
The HDI is a summary measure for assessing long-term progress in three basic dimensions of human development: A long and healthy life (measured by life expectancy), Access to knowledge level (measured by mean years of education among the adult and children population), and a decent standard of living (measured by Gross National Income (GNI) per capita).
Lebanon’s HDI value for 2017 is 0.757 putting the country in the high human development category—positioning it at 80 out of 189 countries and territories noting that between 2005 and 2017, Lebanon’s HDI value increased by 3.4%. In fact, between 2005 and 2017 , life expectancy grew by 3.91% to reach 79.8 , while GNI per capita recorded an uptick of 10.12% to USD 13,378. It is worth mentioning that Lebanon’s HDI 0.757 is above the average of 0.699 for countries in Arab States.
Figure 1: Trends in Lebanon’s HDI component indices 2005-2017
2-Gender Development Index (GDI)
In the 2014, Human Development Report Office (UN) (HDRO) introduced a new measure, the GDI, based on the sex-disaggregated Human Development Index, defined as a ratio of the female to the male HDI. The GDI measures gender inequalities in achievement in three basic dimensions of human development: health (measured by female and male life expectancy at birth), education (measured by female and male expected years of schooling for children and mean years for adults aged 25 years and older); and command over economic resources (measured by female and male estimated GNI per capita).
In Lebanon the 2017 female HDI value is 0.701 in contrast with 0.788 for males, resulting in a GDI value of 0.889 compared to 0.857 for Jordan and 0.990 for Kuwait.
3-Gender Inequality Index (GII)
In 2010 HDR introduced the GII, which reflects gender-based inequalities and give an idea about the loss in human development due to inequality between female and male achievements. It is measured in three dimensions : reproductive health (measured by maternal mortality and adolescent birth rates), empowerment(measured by the share of parliamentary seats held by women and attainment in secondary and higher education by each gender) and economic activity(measured by the labour market participation rate for women and men.)
In 2017, Lebanon has a GII value of 0.381, ranking it 85 out of 160 countries while Jordan and Kuwait are ranked at 108 and 57, respectively. In fact, women held 3.1% of parliamentary seats in Lebanon. The female participation in the labor market is 23.2% compared to 71.1% for men .Moreover, 53% of women have done at least a secondary level of education compared to 55.4 % of their male counterparts.