Human Development Index - 2020

[Mista]

Vietnam's health care has always far better than the Phillipines for ages. We have had world-class doctors (even during the war against America) and some may deserve the Nobel prize for medicine, e.g. Dr. Dang Van Ngu, if not for the political reasons. Our life expectancy is 75.3 compared to the Phillipines's of 71.1. Number of hospital beds or doctors per population wise, we are second only to Singapore in South East Asia, not to mention our quality of doctors are of world-class.

Our quality of education is also world class, which is recognized by OECD. Vietnam ranked 10th in 2018 PISA test, behind only Singapore in South East Asia. Phillipines was almost near the bottom among the participants.

Our GDP per capita (either nominal or PPP) may be lower than the Phillipines by a little bit, but not too much in 2019.

I do not understand why Vietnam's HDI is lower than the Phillipines or Indonesia.

Similarly China's HDI ranking, which is lower than Kazakhstan's, Oman's, Serbia's, Bulgaria's and various poorer East European (now firmly in the West's camp), .. seems to be politically motivated.

That's likely because Indonesia/the Philippines are performing better in the Education Index and GNI PPP per capita.

Note that the Education dimension is measured simply by years of schooling and does not account for qualitative factors such as PISA/TIMSS. The Health dimension is also measured only by life expectancy and does not include the number of doctors/hospital beds etc. The HDI is just a rough and simple measurement.

Interestingly, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam have higher mean years of schooling than China. I guess that's because of the Cultural Revolution in the 60s/70s which still affect a large part of China's adult population today.