SE Asia. If you traveled to or simply studied the region in the first 15 years of the century, you are aware of its economic buzz (unless maybe, if you visited sleepy Vientiane). But, you may have wondered, like I did, how life there stacks up to life elsewhere in the world. The next few posts seek to answer that question, starting at a high level and then drilling down.
One of the best metrics that looks at human development is the UN’s HDI. The index ranges from 0 to 1, where 0 is extreme low development and 1 is extreme high development. For context, Norway and the Nordics score highly and Niger and most sub-Saharan nations sit toward the bottom. Check out the map above for the global view. SE Asian nations, as you might expect from countries in an economically developing region, are mostly hovering right around the global average. In fact, Indonesia sits right at the global average. The massive island nation anchors the region as the largest by both population, at 264 mm, and by land mass (having over 21,000 islands helps with that).
While much of SE Asia’s population sits around the global average on development, if we zoom-in on the region (image above), we can see a lot of differentiation. From this view, a dichotomy jumps off the page. The region’s stars are Singapore, Brunei, and Malaysia. The regions laggards are Myanmar, Lao, and Cambodia.
A more detailed look at key components of the HDI in the image below reveals a continuation of the dichotomy. Interestingly, the stratification with mostly green in the upper-left and mostly red/orange in to the bottom-right appears most clearly when sorting by CPI score - Corruption Perception Index score.
That observation made me especially curious - is there a correlation between corruption and human development in the region? The following post will examine this subject more. But, before moving on, take a look at the stark contrasts between Cambodia and Singapore’s level of corruption, risk ratings, and overall HDI scores.