This paper analyses the progress in human development across countries during the period 1990–2022 based on a surface measure of human development that has been developed for the purpose. The surface measure of human development addresses (HDS) the problems associated with aggregating the indexes of health, education and income by either arithmetic mean or geometric mean. The level of human development across countries based on the (HDS) is found to be similar to that obtained by the conventional HDI. The decomposition of the increase in the surface measure of human development during 1990–2021, although there are some difference in ranking, suggests that progress in the education index has been the main driver of human progress in the world during the last 30 years.
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