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The HDI (Human Development Index) in Brazil in 2019, the first year of the government of Jair Bolsonaro (without a party), had a slight increase. However, the result is insufficient to boost the country’s advancement in the world rankings.
On the contrary: Brazil lost five positions in one year, going from position 79 to 84 among 189 nations evaluated.
The index comprises life expectancy at birth, education, and income. Brazil’s HDI stood at 0.765 in 2019, compared to 0.762 in 2018, an increase of 0.39%. In the previous year, the index was 0.761.
Growth is slow and reflects in particular gender and income inequalities, as indicated by other indicators formulated by the UNDP (United Nations Development Program).
The pace has been dropping the country in the world rankings, continuously.
In relation to 2014, the year mentioned in the report published by UNDP for comparison purposes, Brazil lost two positions. The indicators will worsen in 2020, due to the effects of the new coronavirus pandemic.
UNDP projects an overall decline in the global HDI this year, in much larger proportions, for example, than in the 2008 financial crisis.
The exact value of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on human development in each country will not be known until 2021.
The closer to 1, the better HDI for a country. Norway, which leads the ranking for human development, has an HDI of 0.957.
Brazil’s intermediate position still places it in the group of countries with high human development. In this group are the nations with an HDI between 0.7 and 0.799.
In Latin America, Brazil has a lower HDI than Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Cuba, Mexico, Peru and Colombia. The country is ahead of Ecuador, Paraguay, Bolivia and Venezuela.
Analysis of the composition of the HDI reveals a country with a high life expectancy at birth: 75.9 years in 2019. The increase was 0.2 compared to 2018. In 1990, this expectation was 66.3 years.
The expected years of schooling have stagnated since 2016, at 15.4. Average years of schooling increased slightly, from 7.8 to 8.
The country slides in the per capita income of the population, unable to match the progress achieved in 2010. That year, the annual per capita income reached US $ 14,409. It fell in 2016 and has no longer recovered to the levels reached.
In 2019, it stood at $ 14,263, an increase of 0.5% over 2018.
UNDP has tools to calculate human development losses due to inequalities in a country. To do this, it created an indicator called HDI-D, which makes adjustments to the HDI based on inequality factors.
Inequality lowers Brazil’s HDI, from 0.765 to 0.570. Brazil is much more unequal than other countries.
In the HDI-D, the position in the world ranking falls from place 84 to 104. The loss is more significant than that observed in Colombia, Mexico and Latin America as a whole.
A similar movement occurs when analyzing the profile of gender inequality. For this reason alone, the country ranks 95th. Factors such as maternal mortality, teenage pregnancy, and the seats held by women in the legislature are taken into account.
For the first time, UNDP calculated the impact of human development on the environment. It was a way of trying to measure the environmental cost of improving people’s quality of life.
To do so, it took into account CO² emissions (tons per capita) and the use of material resources by a population (also in tons per capita).
The application of this criterion reduces the Brazilian HDI to 0.710. The decline, however, does not occur at the same rate as in other countries, which means that human development has a lower environmental cost in Brazil than in other nations.
Taking this cut into account, Brazil would rise ten places in the table. China, for example, would fall 16 places. Its HDI is sharply reduced, from 0.761 to 0.671.
In the UNDP report Brazil is mentioned several times in relation to the environmental issue. The document mentions the fires in the Pantanal this year and the deforestation of the Amazon.
Native vegetation has been lost due to logging and new land uses, as the UNDP report highlights. The document makes a reservation: biodiversity is conserved in Brazilian indigenous lands, due to the way in which indigenous people occupy these spaces.
