How Developed is Latin America? Depends Where You Look

However, the reality is far more varied than you might think.

Judging by the metrics of the Human Development Index (HDI), the region’s most developed countries – with a Very High score – are to be found in Central America and the Southern Cone. At their best, citizens of countries like Chile and Costa Rica enjoy standards of living comparable to developed European or East Asian countries.

Following this grouping, there’s the category in which most Latin American countries fall, High. Latin America’s three largest countries by population – Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia – fall into this categorization, and a result nearly three-quarters of Latin Americans live in countries at this ranking.

Here, there’s some definite human development, with the HDI education, health, and standard of living indices all still above that of least-developed countries. However, greater inequalities and disparities persist. Notably, massive countries like Brazil feature major internal contradictions, with the south and southeast of the country significantly wealthier and more developed than the north.

Finally, there are the final two classifications worth mentioning here, that of Medium and Low HDI countries. The latter category only has one Latin American country, Haiti, which is the hemisphere’s poorest country and sees standard of living equivalent to some of the worst-off countries worldwide.

Meanwhile, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and the countries of the Northern Triangle all make up the final categorization. These six countries, for either historical or ongoing reasons, persist as among Latin America’s poorest when it comes to health and education. Some have seen better days, while for others a mixture of foreign imperialism, natural disasters, and weak governance have kept their human development persistently low for the region.

All in all, Latin Americans (besides Haitians) do enjoy on average a higher human development than other developing world regions such as Africa. However, as the United Nations tracks HDI each year, careful attention must be paid to whether the region sees standards of living increase for its citizens efficiently and sustainably.