List of countries in Asia and Oceania by Human Development Index

The Human Development Index (HDI) is a comparative measure of life expectancy, literacy, education and standards of living for countries worldwide. It is a standard means of measuring well-being, especially child welfare. It is used to distinguish whether the country is a developed, a developing or an under-developed country, and also to measure the impact of economic policies on quality of life. Countries fall into four broad categories based on their HDI: very high, high, medium, and low human development. Currently, no Oceanian country falls into the low human development category while Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen are the only Asian countries which fall into this category.

The index was developed in 1990 by Pakistani economist Mahbub ul Haq and Indian economist Amartya Sen.

The table below presents the latest Human Development Index (HDI) for countries in Asia and the Pacific as included in a Development report of united nations development programme released on 13 March 2024 and based on data collected in 2022.

Countries with contiguous boundaries that are partially (but not entirely) located in Asia are shown here in italics, but HDI figures are given for the whole country. Macau, North Korea, and Taiwan in Asia, are not ranked as they are not included in the latest report by the United Nations Development Programme.