The human development index and small states

Abstract

This paper attempts to examine how small states fare in terms of human development. It examines the Human Development Index for the period 1990 to 2004 and averages the scores for five groups of countries classified according to population size. The very small countries are those with a population of 1.5 million or less. The paper finds that these countries tend to obtain relatively high scores on the HDI. Many studies have found that these countries are also particularly economically vulnerable. The paper argues that the HDI may be failing to reflect the particular difficulties faced by small countries due to their economic vulnerability. Better consideration of vulnerabi lity issues in the measurement of human development may thus be warranted.