Guyana remains within the medium human development category with a Human Development Index (HDI) value of 0.682 for 2019 – a value that positions it at 122 out of 189 countries and territories.
This is according to UNDP’s Human Development Report 2020 dubbed ‘The Next Frontier: Human Development and the Anthropocene,’ which was released in December, 2020.
“Between 1990 and 2019, Guyana’s HDI value increased from 0.548 to 0.682, an increase of 24.5 percent…Between 1990 and 2019, Guyana’s life expectancy at birth increased by 6.6 years, mean years of schooling increased by 1.7 years and expected years of schooling increased by 1.3 years. Guyana’s GNI per capita increased by about 272.6 percent between 1990 and 2019,” the report detailed.
The HDI is an average measure of basic human development achievements in a country. Importantly, it masks inequality in the distribution of human development across the population at the country level.
It was noted that while the country’s 2019 HDI of 0.682 is above the average of 0.631 for countries in the medium human development group, it remains below the average of 0.766 for countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. In the report, UNDP compared Guyana with Belize and Suriname, which have HDIs ranked 110 and 97 respectively.
“Guyana’s HDI for 2019 is 0.682. However, when the value is discounted for inequality, the HDI falls to 0.556, a loss of 18.5 percent due to inequality in the distribution of the HDI dimension indices. Belize and Suriname show losses due to inequality of 22.6 percent and 27.5 percent, respectively. The average loss 5 due to inequality for medium HDI countries is 26.3 percent and for Latin America and the Caribbean it is 22.2 percent. The Human inequality coefficient for Guyana is equal to 18.3 percent,” the report states.
Additionally, Guyana’s Gender Development Index (GDI) value is 0.961 when compared to GDI values for Belize and Suriname are 0.976 and 0.985, respectively.
“Guyana has a GII (Gender Inequality Index) value of 0.462, ranking it 115 out of 162 countries in the 2019 index. In Guyana, 31.9 percent of parliamentary seats are held by women, and 70.9 percent of adult women have reached at least a secondary level of education compared to 56.4 percent of their male counterparts. For every 100,000 live births, 169.0 women die from pregnancy related causes; and the adolescent birth rate is 74.4 births per 1,000 women of ages 15-19. Female participation in the labour market is 43.9 percent compared to 68.5 for men,” the report further pointed out.
