The rankings were contained in the 2010 United Nations Human Development Report which placed Barbados third on the list of members of the Organization of American States – behind the United States 4th and Canada 8th but 42nd in the world out of 169 UN member-countries rated on the basis of their Human Development Index, HDI. The Bahamas was next, 43rd globally but fourth in the Hemisphere while Trinidad and Tobago was 59th in the world but eighth in North America, the Caribbean and Latin America, after Argentina, Panama and Mexico but ahead of Costa Rica, Venezuela and Ecuador. Jamaica was in the top half of the 169 states with a global ranking of 80th, two spots below Belize which was 78th.
The Human Development Report now in its 20th years is considered the world’s best measuring tool of quality of life performance and it ranked Norway, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Ireland, Liechtenstein, Netherlands, Canada, Sweden and Germany as the global leaders. At the other end of the scale Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Burundi, Niger, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zimbabwe had the world’s worst records.
While at first glance many of this year’s rankings in the Caribbean may appear to be dramatic falls or improvements from where they stood say at the turn of the 21st, the UN itself warned against comparing the 2010 positions with those of previous years.
“This year’s HDI should not be compared to the HIDI that appeared in previous editions of the Human Development Report due to the use of different indicators and calculations,” it stated. “The 2010 charts national ranking changes over five year internals, rather than on a year-to-year basis.
”Still, in an effort to provide a comparative guide to the successes or failure of countries, the experts evaluated their performance over a five year period, beginning in 2005, and the results showed that Barbados slipped by one place; the Bahamas 3; Suriname 5; Jamaica and Haiti six; and Belize by nine while Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana each moved up a notch.The experts who prepared the survey placed Barbados on the list of places with a “very high human development” record while the Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago, Belize, Jamaica, Panama, Venezuela and Costa Rica had achieved a “high” level of development.But the Dominican Republic, Suriname, Guyana and China were among those countries which had achieved a “medium” rate of development.
Haiti was rated “low.”Helen Clarke, UNDP’s top Administrator, said that “on one crucial point” about the annual report, “the evidence is compelling and clear: there is much that countries can do to improve the quality of people’s lives even under adverse circumstances. Many countries have made great gains in health and education despite only modest growth in income, while some countries with strong economic performance over the decade have failed to make similarity impressive progress in life expectancy schooling and over-all living standards.
”Life expectancy, a key measuring tool indicated that West Indians were living longer than people in most areas of the developing world. Barbadians 77.7 years; Belizeans 76.9; Grenadians 75.8; Bahamians 74.4; St. Lucians 74.2; person in the Dominican Republic 72.8; Jamaicans 72.3; Trinidadians 69.9; Surinamese 69.4; and Guyanese 67.9 years had some of the longest life spans. Cubans and Chileans led the way with almost 79 years. On the other hand, nationals of Zimbabwe, Central African Republic, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Swaziland, Lesotho and Rwanda and Zambia had life expectancy rates that were at least 20 years shorter than most members of Caricom.The first report was published in 1990 and Clarke went to great lengths to insist that was now “universally accepted that a country’s success or an individual’s wellbeing cannot be measured by money alone.”The countries which belong to the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, OECS –Antigua, Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts-Nevis, St. Lucia and St. Vincent were dropped from the global HDI index.When it came to education, children in Bahamas, Guyana, Cuba, Jamaica, Barbados, and Trinidad and Tobago had at least 11 years of schooling while Haitians had slightly less than seven years.
