COVID risks reversing over six years of progress


          This Report also produces for the first time a “COVID-sensitive” estimation of the human development index (HDI) at the national-level—bringing together how the pandemic has impacted economic, health and education dimensions into one statistic to assess human well-being.

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           Aiming to provide insights into how to assess the impacts and policy response to COVID-19, this Report proposes an initial recalibration of the HDI to capture the impact of the pandemic as close to “real-time” as available statistics may allow.


Based on extensive consultations and the formation of a Statistics Panel from Montenegro and international data experts, early estimates show that COVID-19 may cause an overall decline in the HDI for Montenegro never before experienced since the HDI has been calculated.



COVID risks reversing over six years of progress

Based on these calculations, the COVID-sensitive HDI for Montenegro can be estimated as 0.812 for 2020. This represents a decline of 2.13 per cent from the HDI value of 0.829 in 2019. COVID risks reversing at least six years of human development progress in Montenegro, to levels not seen since 2014.

While preliminary, this work opens up several new avenues for research and evidence-based policymaking to ensure a well-grounded response to COVID-19 which puts human development not only back on track, but makes it to deliver for all, leaving no one behind in Montenegro.

Figure 5 Over six years of human development progress at risk