Development index
p. 13 · Read in the full issue
Fiji’s standing on the United Nation’s Human Development Index has moved up 10 notches in the last two years. In the same period Papua New Guinea has remained about stationary, while Vanuatu has advanced and Western Samoa and the Solomon Islands have retreated. These are the only island nations covered by the index which is published every two years.
The United Nations Development Program (UNPD) initiated the index a few years ago to supplement the more traditional economic indices, which show gross national product, the balance of trade, and the rise (and sometimes) the fall of debts.
The Human Development Index, instead, covers such variables as the average length of life, access to health care, level of literacy, and the treatment of women.
Simply reading the numbers released by UNPD this year gives a misleading view of the status of the Pacific islands; this is the case because the 1991 index covered 160 nations, and the 1993 index covers 173 countries. The additional nations, all coming from within what used to be the Soviet Union, rank in 1993 between 29th (Estonia, on the Baltic Sea) and 88th (Tajikistan in Central Asia.) The arrival of the new nations, most of which outranked Fiji in 1993, and all of which outranked the rest of the Pacific island states, have artificially depressed the island ratings as a result.
For example, Western Samoa was 81 in 1991 and seems to have fallen to 98 on the 1993 listing. If the 13 additional ex-Communist countries are removed from the equation, Western Samoa moved down from 81 to 85 on the corrected list.
While Fiji appears to have stayed at number 71 on the two lists, it in fact moved up to 61, when the new nations are eliminated. In other words, compared to the nations that were on both the 1991 and 1993 lists, Fiji moved up 10 full places.
In general terms, the Pacific island nations are in the middle of the spectrum on the Human Development Index. They are well below the industrial nations Japan leads the list every year), but all are above the poverty-stricken nations of Africa.
In addition to health data the new UNDP report also had some interesting things to say about the distribution of modern communications equipment in the households of the five Pacific island nations. One ol the most drastic variables shown in the report is the percentage of nations’ Gross National Products (GNP) accounted for by official development assistance. Here Western Samoa was not only the highest for the region, but third highest in the world with fully 52.0 per cent of its GNP, in 1991, coming from assistance from other nations and from international bodies. The others in the Pacific were Vanuatu with 24 per cent, the Solomons 20 per cent, PNG 11.2 per cent, and Fiji with the least, 3.5 per cent.