Social measures of development ought to be factored in to calculate a country’s overall level of development. Some believe that additional factors such as human rights and happiness are very important. Political corruption and gender inequality are used in some studies. With so much data available to us we use composite measures instead. Composite measures combine several development measures into one formula. The Human Development Index (HDI) consists of three elements. These are:

• income
• life expectancy
• education

HDI per capita is used as an estimated measure of wealth. Life expectancy is the average number of years a person can expect to live. The average number of years of schooling is used in an education index. The three parts are processed to produce a number between 0 and 1.

The world’s highest-and lowest-scoring countries in 2015 are shown below:

Norway = 0.944

Australia = 0.933

Switzerland = 0.917

Central African Republic = 0.341

Demoscratic Republic of Congo = 0.338

Niger = 0.337