Comparing Mexico and Dominican republic

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Comparing Mexico and the Dominican Republic
The United Nations Human Development Index utilizes the statistics on the general health of the people, education levels and standards of living in approximating the overall social and economic development of a country. The information from these statistics gives an investor, or anyone planning to travel to a given country, an idea of essential factors like health care and economic stability of the country. Mexico is ranked 77th with a value of 0.762 in the current rankings while the Dominican Republic, which is positioned twenty-two spots lower, has a value of 0.722 (United Nations Development Programme [UNDP] 1).
Dominican Republic’s index value has increased from 0.596 in 1990 to its present value of 0.722. Mexico, on the other hand, has also seen an improvement in its valuation from 0.648 to 0.762 (UNDP 1). When these values are discounted for inequality, Dominican Republic’s falls to 0.565 while Mexico’s falls to 0.587, a loss of 21.7% and 22.9% respectively (UNDP 1). It is clear that the IHDI percentages for both countries are high, and this can be attributed to the issues faced by the whole of the Latin American region. Latin America has been regarded as the unequal region in the world when it comes to income distribution (Trueba et al. 145). Since it is still a developing region, the inequalities might be due to the internal issues of individual countries and external differences between the countries.

The Dominican Republic has 6 percent of its population categorized in multidimensional poverty, which is the same percentage in Mexico. However, 20.6 percent of Dominican Republic’s population is living near multidimensional poverty, 10 percent more than in Mexico (UNDP 1). It shows that in the Dominican Republic, a significant portion of those living above poverty line may still be deprived of good access to education, healthcare, and decent living conditions. It is a common observation in most of the developing countries.
There has been a great improvement in the quality of life in both Mexico and Dominican Republic since 1990. The current trends suggest that both countries will continue to show more development in the coming years. Although HDI values are normally given more considerations, IHDI provides better approximation because it is less skewed by the rich who make the Gross National Income per capita look much higher than it is. It is clearly shown by the data collected for the two countries compared in this analysis.

Works Cited
Trueba, Carmen and Lorena Remuzgo. “Evolution of Inequality in Latin America (1980-2014): A Multidimensional Approach beyond Income.” Revista De Economía Mundial, no. 45, Jan. 2017, pp. 143-159.
United Nations Development Programme. “| Human Development Reports.” Hdr.undp.org. N.p., 2016. Web. 12 Mar. 2018.