This article presents a list of Japanese regions by Human Development Index as of 2021. This article also includes a list of Japanese prefectures by historical HDI in 1990, 1995 and 2000 further below.
This is a list regions of Japan by Human Development Index calculated using the new methodology. [1]
| Rank | Region | HDI (2022) |
|---|---|---|
| Very high human development | ||
| 1 | Southern Kantō, Koshin (Saitama, Chiba, Tokyo, Kanagawa, Yamanashi, Nagano) | 0.946 |
| 2 | Kansai (Shiga, Kyoto, Osaka, Hyōgo, Nara, Wakayama) | 0.922 |
| 3 | Tōkai (Gifu, Shizuoka, Aichi, Mie) | 0.920 |
| – |  Japan | 0.920 |
| 4 | Chūgoku (Tottori, Shimane, Okayama, Hiroshima, Yamaguchi) | 0.916 |
| 5 | Northern Kantō (Ibaraki, Tochigi, Gunma) | 0.908 |
| 6 | Hokuriku (Niigata, Toyama, Ishikawa, Fukui) | 0.902 |
| 7 | Shikoku (Tokushima, Kagawa, Ehime, Kōchi) | 0.899 |
| Kyushu (Fukuoka, Saga, Nagasaki, Kumamoto, Ōita, Miyazaki, Kagoshima, Okinawa) | ||
| 9 | Hokkaido | 0.893 |
| 10 | Tōhoku (Aomori, Iwate, Miyagi, Akita, Yamagata, Fukushima) | 0.888 |
This is a list of Japanese prefectures by Human Development Index calculated using the old methodology. This data was taken from the 2007 paper "Gross National Happiness and Material Welfare in Bhutan and Japan" (Tashi Choden, Takayoshi Kusago, Kokoro Shirai, Centre for Bhutan Studies, Osaka University).
| Rank | Prefecture | HDI (1990) | HDI (1995) | HDI (2000) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Tokyo | 0.9296 | 0.9448 | 0.9667 |
| 2 |  Aichi | 0.9115 | 0.9265 | 0.9460 |
| 3 |  Shiga | 0.9080 | 0.9229 | 0.9426 |
| 4 |  Shizuoka | 0.9056 | 0.9204 | 0.9402 |
| 5 |  Fukui | 0.9027 | 0.9204 | 0.9401 |
| 6 |  Toyama | 0.9031 | 0.9205 | 0.9392 |
| 7 |  Osaka | 0.9003 | 0.9177 | 0.9390 |
| 8 |  Nagano | 0.8980 | 0.9148 | 0.9365 |
| 9 |  Ishikawa | 0.8991 | 0.9163 | 0.9364 |
| 10 |  Hiroshima | 0.9032 | 0.9170 | 0.9361 |
| 11 |  Kyoto | 0.8952 | 0.9123 | 0.9333 |
| 12 |  Mie | 0.8934 | 0.9123 | 0.9329 |
| 13 |  Kanagawa | 0.8996 | 0.9119 | 0.9324 |
| 14 |  Yamanashi | 0.8944 | 0.9094 | 0.9319 |
| 15 |  Okayama | 0.8992 | 0.9152 | 0.9316 |
| 16 |  Kagawa | 0.8945 | 0.9122 | 0.9304 |
| 17 |  Gunma | 0.8957 | 0.9117 | 0.9303 |
| 18 |  Tochigi | 0.8955 | 0.9107 | 0.9294 |
| 19 |  Niigata | 0.8921 | 0.9095 | 0.9290 |
| 20 |  Hyōgo | 0.8950 | 0.9086 | 0.9290 |
| 21 |  Ōita | 0.8891 | 0.9076 | 0.9285 |
| 22 |  Gifu | 0.8921 | 0.9070 | 0.9263 |
| 23 |  Hokkaidō | 0.8863 | 0.9068 | 0.9260 |
| 24 |  Ibaraki | 0.8928 | 0.9080 | 0.9259 |
| 25 |  Yamaguchi | 0.8924 | 0.9084 | 0.9258 |
| 26 |  Miyagi | 0.8926 | 0.9071 | 0.9247 |
| 27 |  Fukushima | 0.8880 | 0.9044 | 0.9241 |
| 28 |  Tottori | 0.8887 | 0.9045 | 0.9239 |
| 29 |  Shimane | 0.8858 | 0.9021 | 0.9231 |
| 30 |  Fukuoka | 0.8896 | 0.9061 | 0.9228 |
| 31 |  Kumamoto | 0.8872 | 0.9045 | 0.9225 |
| 32 |  Ehime | 0.8862 | 0.9047 | 0.9221 |
| 33 |  Chiba | 0.8868 | 0.9019 | 0.9219 |
| 34 |  Yamagata | 0.8855 | 0.9014 | 0.9216 |
| 35 |  Saga | 0.8810 | 0.9021 | 0.9189 |
| 36 |  Iwate | 0.8792 | 0.8998 | 0.9186 |
| 37 |  Tokushima | 0.8831 | 0.9005 | 0.9182 |
| 38 |  Nara | 0.8794 | 0.8944 | 0.9169 |
| 39 |  Saitama | 0.8811 | 0.8956 | 0.9166 |
| 40 |  Kōchi | 0.8781 | 0.8964 | 0.9156 |
| 41 |  Wakayama | 0.8770 | 0.8957 | 0.9155 |
| 42 |  Miyazaki | 0.8780 | 0.8959 | 0.9148 |
| 43 |  Akita | 0.8777 | 0.8951 | 0.9142 |
| 44 |  Nagasaki | 0.8749 | 0.8949 | 0.9127 |
| 45 |  Kagoshima | 0.8762 | 0.8938 | 0.9127 |
| 46 |  Okinawa | 0.8810 | 0.8940 | 0.9111 |
| 47 |  Aomori | 0.8698 | 0.8877 | 0.9065 |
The economy of Bhutan is based on agriculture and forestry, which provide the main livelihood for more than 60% of the population. Agriculture consists largely of subsistence farming and animal husbandry. Rugged mountains dominate the terrain and make the building of roads and other infrastructure difficult. Bhutan is among the richest by gross domestic product (nominal) per capita in South Asia, at $3,491 as of 2022, but it still places 153rd, and among the poorest in the world. The total gross domestic product is only $2,653 million, and 178th according to IMF.
Gross domestic product (GDP) is a monetary measure of the market value of all the final goods and services produced and rendered in a specific time period by a country or countries. GDP is often used to measure the economic health of a country or region. Several national and international economic organizations maintain definitions of GDP, such as the OECD and the International Monetary Fund.
Quality of life (QOL) is defined by the World Health Organization as "an individual's perception of their position in life in the context of the culture and value systems in which they live and in relation to their goals, expectations, standards and concerns".
The Human Development Index (HDI) is a statistical composite index of life expectancy, education, and per capita income indicators, which is used to rank countries into four tiers of human development. A country scores a higher level of HDI when the lifespan is higher, the education level is higher, and the gross national income GNI (PPP) per capita is higher. It was developed by Pakistani economist Mahbub ul-Haq and was further used to measure a country's development by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)'s Human Development Report Office.
Genuine progress indicator (GPI) is a metric that has been suggested to replace, or supplement, gross domestic product (GDP). The GPI is designed to take fuller account of the well-being of a nation, only a part of which pertains to the size of the nation's economy, by incorporating environmental and social factors which are not measured by GDP. For instance, some models of GPI decrease in value when the poverty rate increases. The GPI separates the concept of societal progress from economic growth.
The Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW) is an economic indicator intended to replace the gross domestic product (GDP), which is the main macroeconomic indicator of System of National Accounts (SNA). Rather than simply adding together all expenditures like the GDP, consumer spending is balanced by such factors as income distribution and cost associated with pollution and other unsustainable costs. The calculation excludes defence expenditures and considers a wider range of harmful effects of economic growth. It is similar to the genuine progress indicator (GPI).
Gross National Happiness, sometimes called Gross Domestic Happiness (GDH), is a philosophy that guides the government of Bhutan. It includes an index which is used to measure the collective happiness and well-being of a population. Gross National Happiness Index is instituted as the goal of the government of Bhutan in the Constitution of Bhutan, enacted on 18 July 2008.
The Human Poverty Index (HPI) was an indication of the poverty of community in a country, developed by the United Nations to complement the Human Development Index (HDI) and was first reported as part of the Human Development Report in 1997. It is developed by United Nations Development Program which also publishes indexes like HDI It was considered to better reflect the extent of deprivation in deprived countries compared to the HDI. In 2010, it was supplanted by the UN's Multidimensional Poverty Index.
The Happy Planet Index (HPI) is an index of human well-being and environmental impact that was introduced by the New Economics Foundation in 2006. Each country's HPI value is a function of its average subjective life satisfaction, life expectancy at birth, and ecological footprint per capita. The exact function is a little more complex, but conceptually it approximates multiplying life satisfaction and life expectancy and dividing that by the ecological footprint. The index is weighted to give progressively higher scores to nations with lower ecological footprints.
The National Human Development Reports (NHDR) take the Global Human Development Report approach to the national level and are prepared and owned by national teams. More than 540 national and sub-national HDRs have been produced so far by 135 countries, in addition to 31 regional reports.
The Gender Development Index (GDI) is an index designed to measure gender equality.
The where-to-be-born index, formerly known as the quality-of-life index (QLI), was last published by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) in 2013. Its purpose was to assess which country offered the most favorable conditions for a healthy, secure, and prosperous life in the years following its release.
The Legatum Prosperity Index is an annual ranking developed by the Legatum Institute, an independent educational charity founded and part-funded by the private investment firm Legatum. The ranking is based on a variety of factors including wealth, economic growth, education, health, personal well-being, and quality of life.
UNESCO defined the Gender Parity Index (GPI) as a socioeconomic index usually designed to measure the relative access to education of males and females. It is used by international organizations particularly in measuring the progress of developing countries. For example, some UNESCO documents consider gender parity in literacy.
Multidimensional Poverty Indices uses a range of indicators to calculate a summary poverty figure for a given population, in which a larger figure indicates a higher level of poverty. This figure considers both the proportion of the population that is deemed poor and the 'breadth' of poverty experienced by these 'poor' households, following the Alkire & Foster 'counting method'. The method was developed following increased criticism of monetary and consumption-based poverty measures, seeking to capture the deprivations in non-monetary factors that contribute towards well-being. While there is a standard set of indicators, dimensions, cutoffs and thresholds used for a 'Global MPI', the method is flexible and there are many examples of poverty studies that modify it to best suit their environment. The methodology has been mainly, but not exclusively, applied to developing countries.
Although for many decades, it was customary to focus on GDP and other measures of national income, there has been growing interest in developing broad measures of economic well-being. National and international approaches include the Beyond GDP programme developed by the European Union, the Better Lives Compendium of Indicators developed by the OECD, as well as many alternative metrics of wellbeing or happiness. One of the earliest attempts to develop such an index at national level was Bhutan's Gross National Happiness Index and there are a now a number of similar projects ongoing around the world, including a project to develop for the UK an assessment of national well-being, commissioned by the Prime Minister David Cameron and led by the Office for National Statistics.