IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/sls/resrep/2503.html

The Human Development Index in Canada: Ranking the Provinces and Territories Internationally

Author

Listed:
  • Alisaleh Shariati

Abstract

This study provides internationally comparable estimates of the United Nations’ Human Development Index (HDI) for Canadian provinces and territories over the 2000-2023 period. The HDI is a composite index composed of three dimensions (life expectancy, education and income) measured by four indicators (life expectancy at birth, average years of education, expected years of schooling and gross national income per capita). We first replicate the estimates for Canada from the most recent Human Development Report (HDR, which includes data up to 2023 and was released in May 2025) using Statistics Canada data. We then apply the same methodology to generate estimates for the provinces and territories, and finally, make these estimates internationally comparable by scaling them to Canada’s in the most recent HDR. This methodology allows Canada’s provinces and territories to be ranked in the HDR international tables for the overall HDI as well as its components. We find that the highest HDI score in 2023 belongs to Ontario, followed closely by Quebec and Alberta, which would rank 15 th , 16th and 17th internationally, while the lowest-ranking region of Nunavut, would place 75 th . Overall, our findings highlight substantial regional variation in human development across Canada, which are concealed by the national HDI, as well as a gradual decline in Canada’s relative HDI ranking from 1 st in 1990s to 16th in 2023.

Suggested Citation

  • Alisaleh Shariati, 2025. "The Human Development Index in Canada: Ranking the Provinces and Territories Internationally," CSLS Research Reports 2025-03, Centre for the Study of Living Standards.
    • Handle: RePEc:sls:resrep:2503
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://csls.ca/research/the-human-development-index-in-canada-ranking-the-provinces-and-territories-internationally/
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://csls.ca/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/csls2025-03-1.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sls:resrep:2503. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CSLS (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cslssca.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.