The United Nations has ranked Iran 75th among its 193 member states in its latest Human Development Index.
The index is published in 2025 but uses data collected for 2023 because many countries don’t produce the ranking data very quickly.
The listing shows Iran’s ranking has not changed much. Compared to 2015, Iran has fallen one slot.
The countries that have fallen sharply are Venezuela, down 37 slots, Palestine down 21 slots and Cuba down 16 slots.
On the other side, the big gainers are Guyana up 33 largely because it has just become an oil exporter, the UAE up 27, and China, Vietnam and Eswatini all up 16 slots since 2015.
The index considers the health, education, income and living conditions in a given country to provide a measure of human development that is comparable among countries and over time.
In releasing the report May 6, the UN Development Program said, “Human development progress is experiencing an unprecedented slowdown…. Instead of seeing sustained recovery following the period of exceptional crises of 2020-2021 [during the Covid pandemic], the report reveals unexpectedly weak progress. Excluding those crisis years, the meagre rise in global human development projected in this year’s report is the smallest increase since 1990…..
“The report finds widening inequalities between rich and poor countries. As traditional paths to development are squeezed by global pressures, decisive action is needed to move the world away from prolonged stagnation on progress. ‘For decades, we have been on track to reach a very high human development world by 2030, but this deceleration signals a very real threat to global progress,’ said Achim Steiner, UNDP Administrator.”
The index measures the health, education, income and living conditions in a given country to provide a measure of human development that is comparable among countries and over time.
Iran’s ranking put it a little below Albania and Bosnia, but just above China and Thailand.
Canada is ranked 16th and the United States 17th.
The top six countries in the new index are all northern European: Iceland first; Norway; Switzerland; Denmark; Germany; and Sweden. The bottom six are all African: South Sudan in last place; Somalia; Central African Republic; Chad; Niger; and Mali.
