Venezuela in America: before and after the "revolution"

Updated

1997 HDI

2002 HDI












2010 HDI









Here I plotted United Nations' Human Development Index values for countries in America according to the reports of the years 1997, 2002 and 2010.

I did not put the values in one chart because United Nations has been tweaking on the absolute values. I find it interesting, though, to take a look at the relative position of countries.

As you can see, the top is occupied by English/French American countries. Haiti has been at the bottom all the time. Venezuela's main export by far is and was oil. Oil prices in the nineties were a fraction of what they have been for several years now. Since the so-called "revolution" has been ruling Venezuela, Brazil, Peru, Panama and Mexico have overtaken Venezuela in the HDI.

Now, I want to see for how long useful idiots will keep referring to the HDI when talking about the accomplishments of Venezuela's military regime and which years they will pick up next. Mind: since 1999 the Venezuelan government stopped taking part in open evaluations of its pupils' education levels - unlike Brazil, Panama, Mexico, Colombia and so most other American countries, which are, among other things, taking part in the painful but very helpful PISA programme. Venezuela's current government is simply delivering its side of the story to United Nations, like literacy figures based on self-assesment and the like. In spite of that Venezuela is lagging behind.

Cuba did not deliver the data for the latest HDI reports. Me pregunto porqué.

Lemmy sends us an interesting article about that porqué: Economía Cubana and the Human Development Index