The United Nations annually releases its human development report, which studies critically the level of development in countries worldwide, and releases that data in the Human Development Report.

The 2015 report, according to the body, “is the latest in the series of global Human Development Reports published by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) since 1990 as independent, analytically and empirically grounded discussions of major development issues, trends and policies.”

Norway topped the list for the 12th year running, scoring high in the categories examined such as in life expectancy, education, and income/standard of living. The index tabulates all the criteria into a final score for a nation, measured between 0 and 1.

Norway, top of the list, scored 0.944. Trailing the Scandinavian nation were Australia (0.935), Switzerland (0.930), Denmark (0.923), and The Netherlands (0.922). Germany were (6th), the United States finished (8th), the United Kingdom (14th), Russia (50th) and China (90th)

Ghana finished 140th in the world, falling within the cluster of nations ranked as having medium human development. These include countries such as Botswana (106), Gabon (110), Palestine (113), Vanuatu (134), and Cambodia (143). Ghana’s total score on the index is 0.579.

The highest ranked African nation is Mauritius, with an index score of 0.777, finishing 63rd in the world. South Africa comes in at 116, Nigeria 152. Unsurprisingly, the bottom five were African nations- Niger (0.348), Central African Republic (0.350), Eritrea (0.391), Chad (0.392) and Burundi (0.400).

The goal of the report, is to “emphasize that people and their capabilities should be the ultimate criteria for assessing the development of a country, not economic growth alone.”

The conditions under which people survive are just as important as the wealth in the hands of the nation, and the HDI attempts to measure that annually.

You can find the report on the UNDP website.