The annual report by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), whose main objective centers on measuring growth in diverse areas of human development such as life expectancy, health, education, and life dignity levels, indicates that Venezuela’s overall score has declined 16 points on the Human Development Index (HDI).
Venezuela’s GDP per capita has declined by 25.8% during the time period between 1990-2017, thus marking its fifth year in a row as a declining country in the HDI. This descent is mainly due to the decline in overall income in the country, which is predicted to worsen the already continuous exodus of Venezuelan’s emigrating the country.
The UNDP specialist, Heriberto Tapia, affirms that “In this report, Venezuela falls 16 ranks under its previous position, in contrast with the situation from five years ago. There are certain factors that hint towards the idea that the social problems the country is currently facing and their connection to the sociopolitical factors affecting the country have a lasting effect on the human development conditions.”
Under the category of Latin American countries, Venezuela ranks eighth, still managing to place above Brazil (79) and Ecuador (89). Nonetheless, despite the fact that it doesn’t rank amongst the worst scores for this region, only Syria, Libia, and Yemen, countries known for their longstanding armed conflicts, have descended more ranks than Venezuela. In addition, during the presentation of this report, it was highlighted that the HDI did not include statistics regarding Venezuela’s state during 2018 due to the fact that it would worsen Venezuela’s descent in the ranking system.
