Status: 08.09.2022 08:34 a.m
In nine out of ten countries around the world, people’s living conditions have deteriorated in 2021. That’s according to the United Nations Development Program’s Human Development Index.
In 2021, people’s living conditions have deteriorated in 90 percent of all countries. This is the result of the “Human Development Index” published by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). According to the UNDP, the global index value has continued to rise for a long time, rather than falling for a second time in a row in 2020 and 2021. According to the UN Development Program, this has undone the achievements of the previous five years.
The current decline means “that we die earlier, are less well educated, that our incomes are falling,” UNDP chief Achim Steiner told the AFP news agency. This leads to a widespread feeling of “despair, frustration, fear of the future”.
Switzerland leads, Germany in ninth place
According to the new report, Switzerland is the most developed country in the world with an index value of 0.962, followed by Norway and Iceland. Germany ranks ninth with a value of 0.942. This means that Germany has slipped five places in the ranking since 2015.
When the index was first published in 1990, the United States led. Now they are only ranked 21st. Niger, Chad and South Sudan are at the bottom of the 191 countries surveyed.
Permanent crises as a reason
Steiner complains that the world is reeling from crisis to crisis without the roots of the problems being addressed. “We live in very painful times, whether it’s a world underwater, without water, on fire or in the midst of a pandemic,” he said.
The report’s authors also observed growing pessimism around the world. Six out of seven people worldwide say they feel insecure, and a third say they don’t trust other people.
Biggest Deterioration Ever
According to Steiner, such a comprehensive decline in living conditions as in 2021 has not occurred since the report was first published. At the height of the financial crisis almost ten years ago, the index only fell in around ten percent of the countries.
But there is also progress, according to Steiner, for example thanks to new technologies or new types of grain. In Kenya, 90 percent of the electricity requirement can now be covered by renewable energies. Societies that financed fossil fuels made a mistake, he said.
In addition to economic data, criteria such as life expectancy, income and length of schooling are included in the calculation of the “Index of Human Development”, which has been published since 1990.