GNV News May 14, 2025

On May 6, 2025, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) published a report on global human development. The Human Development Index (HDI), an indicator referenced in this report, was devised to avoid assessments that rely solely on simple economic measures; it evaluates people’s development in three dimensions: health, education, and standard of living. According to the report, HDI growth in 2024 was at a record low worldwide. The world’s HDI temporarily declined due to the COVID-19 pandemic that began in 2020. Although it was on a recovery trend thereafter, the extent was smaller than expected, and in particular, growth in 2024 reached its lowest level since 1990, excluding the exceptional pandemic-era reversal. This stagnation in HDI was also observed across all six regions into which UNDP divides the world.

Furthermore, it has become clear that the gap between countries with high and low HDI—which had been narrowing for the past several decades—has been widening for four consecutive years. This is believed to be due to factors such as international tensions that strain trade relations and reduced public investment resulting from deteriorating government fiscal balances. UNDP warns that if this situation continues, the world will become more unstable and divided, and it will become increasingly difficult to respond to economic and environmental shocks.

Meanwhile, the report also discusses the impacts and potential of artificial intelligence (AI). It argues that HDI can be raised through cooperation with AI rather than competition, and proposes the following approaches: building a foundation on which humans and AI can work complementarily; ensuring that humans are actively involved from the design stage through the development stage of AI; and focusing on developing capabilities that enable people to make effective use of AI.

Learn more about global development → 「How should we interpret the state of global poverty?」

Learn more about inequality and AI → 「Will global inequality be rectified by the development of AI?」

A township in South Africa where low-income residents live (Photo: Isabel Sommerfeld / Flickr [CC BY-ND 2.0])