16-yr IHME Study says India Behind on Health and Education Investment

A study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) that was conducted on behalf of the World Bank, titled “Measuring human capital: A systematic analysis of 195 countries and territories, 1990 to 2016,” has put India’s rank at 158 of the final year of the study. This ranking was a slight improvement from the 162nd rank that the country started out with at the first year of the study.

Director of IHME at the University of Washington, Christopher Murray, said that the point of the study was to show countries the important connection between investing in health and education and the positive development of human capital, saying, “Our findings show the association between investments in education and health and improved human capital and GDP—which policymakers ignore at their own peril.” He added that a shift from agricultural economies to digital economies meant that there was a greater need to develop human capital when he said, “As the world economy grows increasingly dependent on digital technology, from agriculture to manufacturing to the service industry, human capital grows increasingly important for stimulating local and national economies.”

While India fared better than Pakistan, which was ranked 164, and Bangladesh, which was ranked 161 in 2016, it was far below Sri Lanka that claimed the 102nd rank. Compared to countries across the globe, it was Finland that claimed the first rank, and Turkey was the most improvement in the rankings, going from 102 in 1990, to 43 in 2016. The US, surprisingly, fared worse in 2016 than it did in 1990, sliding from 6 to 27.