HDI

This map shows the respective HDI for the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. The HDI measures three things: life expectancy, educational attainment, and adjusted real income. The HDI is used to determine how conditions are improving over time in a given country. As a whole, Latin American and Caribbean countries are in the middle to moderately low social and economic development. The map is broken down into 4 colors representing an HDI range. The red is the lowest category with a range of .498-.702. Next is the yellow with .708-.752. Green follows a range of .759-.784. Blue is the highest with .789- .843.

The red consists of 8 countries: Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guyana, Bolivia, Paraguay, and the worst of the region, Haiti. The yellow encompasses Belize, Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Dominica, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, and Suriname. Green is comprised of Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela, Brazil, and French Guiana. The highest hdi's of the region are held by Costa Rica, Panama, The Bahamas, Barbados, Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay.

The Southern Cone has high life expectancy, high standard of living and low fertility rates along with significant participation in the global market and an emerging economy. Because of this it is clear why they have the highest HDI in the region. One can expect to see Venezuela decline in ranking given all of the problems the country is experiencing right now. The HDI is a great way to measure how the people are living, without getting stuck on only the industrial side of things. As a whole, the region has been improving within the last two decades and looks like it will continue to climb. The low point of the region is Haiti. Being a country that has been ravaged by natural disasters and can develop no industry, it has become heavily reliant on foreign aid and most of its population is uneducated and unemployed.