THE PHILIPPINES improved slightly in an annual report that tracks human development across economies, though it remained in the bottom half, according to the United Nations Development Program Human Development Report 2014 that was released yesterday.  

The report placed the Philippines 117th out of 187 economies last year -- in 2012 it ranked 114th out of 186 in 2012 -- with the country still classified among 41 others with “medium human development.” There were 49 economies in the “very high human development” category, 53 in “high human development,” and 43 in the “low human development” segment.

The ranking was based on the human development index (HDI), which is a composite measure of income, education and health.

The Philippines' HDI of 0.660 was below the 0.703 of East Asia and the Pacific and the world's 0.702.

The report cautioned that since HDI calculation changed in this year’s report, resulting “rankings and values... cannot, therefore, be compared directly to HDI rankings and values published in previous... reports.”

Still, previous rankings and values were subjected to recalculation using the changed methodology, consequently showing the Philippines actually rose a notch from 2012 to 2013.

Topping the list in this year’s report were, in descending order: Norway, Australia, Switzerland, the Netherlands, United States, Germany, New Zealand, Canada, Singapore and Denmark.

In Southeast Asia, following Singapore and beating the Philppines were: Brunei Darussalam (30th), Malaysia (62nd), Thailand (89th), and Indonesia (108th). Faring worse than the Philippines were: Vietnam (121st ), Cambodia (136th), Laos (139th) and Myanmar (150th). -- MFEF

Original Source: http://www.bworldonline.com/content.php?section=TopStory&title=Philippines-improves-in-human-dev%E2%80%99t&id=91530