Norway, Australia and New Zealand are the leaders in health, education and income, a new United Nations Development Program (UNDP) report said here Thursday.
Together with U.N. Secretary-general Ban Ki-moon at the U.N. Headquarters in New York, UNDP chief Helen Clark and Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen launched the annual Human Development Report, which also celebrated its 20th anniversary edition.
The report provides insights into the world's most pressing challenges facing humanity.
Included in the report is the 2010 Human Development Index (HDI), a combination of national measures of health, education and income, which tracked the achievements for 169 countries.
Also among the top ranked countries in the report were the United States, Ireland, Lichtenstein, the Netherlands, Canada, Sweden and Germany.
According to the report, the bottom 10 countries were Mali, Burkina Faso, Liberia, Chad, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique and Burundi.
Compared to the 1990 Report, this year's HDI uses data and methodologies which were previously not available in most countries.
Gross national income per capita replaced gross domestic product per capita, so that income from remittances and international development assistance was included, said UNDP.
In the category of education, expected years of schooling for school-age children replaced gross enrollment, and average years of schooling for adults replaced adult literacy rates.
Life expectancy was the main indicator for health, UNDP said.
It noted the 2010 HDI should not be compared to previous HDI in earlier editions of the Human Development Report since a different set of indicators and calculations had been used.
This year's HDI charted national ranking changes over five-year intervals, rather than on a year-to-year basis.
The 2010 HDI report also included new indices -- the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index, the Gender Inequality Index, and the Multidimensional Poverty Index.
The UNDP is the U.N. global developmental arm and is present in 166 countries.