Inequality in human development across the globe

The Human Development Index, which reflects societies’ combined achievement in education, health and standard of living, has since its introduction become the most famous indicator of the level of development of societies. A disadvantage of this index is however, that only national values are available, whereas within many countries huge subnational variation in development exists. Here we present the Subnational Human Development Index (SHDI), which shows within-country variation in human development across the globe. Covering more than 1600 regions within 160 countries, the SHDI and its dimension indices provide a ten times higher-resolution picture than was available before. Within-country variation is particularly strong in low and middle developed countries and less important in the most developed ones. Education disparities explain most SHDI inequality within low-developed countries and standard of living differences within more highly developed countries. With the SHDI, global socio-economic change can be studied with unprecedented coverage and detail.