Barbados leads region in life expectancy, literacy, school enrolment

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Barbados leads region in life expectancy, literacy, school enrolment - report

CMC

Sunday, October 25, 2009

BANGKOK, CMC - Barbados is the highest ranking Caribbean Community (Caricom) country for life expectancy, literacy, school enrolment and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita, according to the latest Human Development Index (HDI) released here on Monday.

The 2009 Human Development Report (HDR) placed Barbados among the top 38 countries of the world with Norway, Australia and Iceland maintaining the top three spots as had been the case in 2007.

According to the report, Barbados, which placed 37th, is the only Caricom country in the 'Very High Human Development' category.

Antigua and Barbuda (47), The Bahamas (52); St Kitts and Nevis (62), Trinidad and Tobago (64), St Lucia (69), Dominica (73) and Grenada (74) were the Caricom countries ranked in the category 'High Human Development'.

In the Medium Human Development category, St Vincent and the Grenadines was the highest Caribbean country with a ranking of 91, followed by Belize (93), Suriname (97), Jamaica (100), Guyana (114) and Haiti (149).

The report noted that despite progress in many areas over the last 25 years, the disparities in people's well-being in rich and poor countries continue to be unacceptably wide.

This year's HDI was calculated for 182 countries and territories, the most extensive coverage ever.

"Despite significant improvements over time, progress has been uneven," says the report's lead author Jeni Klugman.

"Many countries have experienced setbacks over recent decades, in the face of economic downturns, conflict-related crises and the HIV and AIDS epidemic. And this was even before the impact of the current global financial crisis was felt," Klugman added.

The HDR, which is an independent report commissioned and published annually by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), tackles pressing global challenges.

The 2009 Report is titled Overcoming barriers: Human mobility and development and has been translated into more than a dozen languages and launched in many countries around the world.

Beyond the HDI, the report includes tables on various measures of human development including demographic trends, the economy and inequality, and education and health. It also provides a wealth of internationally comparable data that allows users to detail the key features of international and internal movements of people.

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