Hey everyone, HDI
I’m Alex, and I’ve spent the last 7 years working with HDI for our clients—governments, NGOs, and even a few global corporations that need clear, actionable stats to make decisions. Lately, I’ve been getting a ton of questions: “How does crime really tie into HDI?” And not just the surface-level “correlation is real” stuff—like, the messy, day-to-day way high crime messes with the metrics that make up HDI. Let’s break this down, no jargon, just real data and what it means for the folks we supply HDI reports to.
First, let’s recap what HDI actually is, because I swear half the confusion comes from people thinking it’s just “how rich a country is.” Nope. The UNDP’s Human Development Index splits into three core bits: health (life expectancy at birth, access to medical stuff), education (school enrollment, literacy rates, how long people actually stay in school), and standard of living (GNI per capita, adjusted for cost of living). Crime doesn’t just sit on top of this—it seeps into every single part of it, sometimes in ways you might not immediately see.
Take a country I worked with last year: let’s call it Country X, which had a 2022 HDI rank of 157 out of 191. Their homicide rate? Around 35 per 100,000 people—way higher than the global average of 5 per 100k. When we dug into their HDI components, two things stood out. First, life expectancy was 58, 10 years below the global HDI average. Why? Because when crime is high, people skip going to hospitals for non-emergencies—what if you walk out and get robbed? We talked to a local clinic director who said half their patients wait until their symptoms are life-threatening, because the commute there is too risky. That’s not a “lazy population” thing—that’s a crime-driven choice that tanked their health score.
Then there’s education. Country X’s primary school enrollment was 92%, which sounds fine, but secondary enrollment was only 58%—way lower than similar countries with lower crime rates. Why? Teenagers are skipping school because gang recruitment is easy on the way to class, or their parents can’t send them because they’d have to pay for transit that’s now marked as “high risk.” One teacher told us 20% of her students last year dropped out because their families moved neighborhoods to avoid cartel violence—so education access isn’t just about school buildings, it’s about being safe enough to show up. That directly dragged down their education sub-index, which dragged their overall HDI down even more.
But here’s the tricky part: it’s not one-way. High HDI can also mean lower crime, right? Like, a country with a higher standard of living can afford more police, better social programs that cut gang recruitment, and people don’t have to turn to crime to feed their families. But when we look at the data, the reverse is way sharper—high crime almost always hits HDI harder than low HDI fixes crime fast.
We pulled 2021-2023 data from the UNDP and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) for 40 countries with homicide rates above 15 per 100k (that’s the threshold for “high crime” per UNODC). The average HDI for these countries was 0.63—they’re in the “medium human development” tier, right at the edge of “low.” Compare that to countries with homicide rates under 5 per 100k: their average HDI was 0.81, which is “very high.” That’s a 0.18 gap—huge, when HDI is calculated on a scale from 0 to 1.
But let’s not just stop at averages. There are outliers, which is where our work as an HDI supplier matters most. Take Costa Rica. Their homicide rate is around 11 per 100k—high, but not crazy. Their 2022 HDI is 0.80, which is “very high.” How’d they do it? They redirected military spending (which used to be 10% of GDP) to social programs—education, youth job training, and community policing. They cut their homicide rate by 22% in 5 years, and their HDI jumped 0.04. That’s proof that high crime doesn’t have to lock a country into low HDI—if you adjust policies, it changes.
Another outlier: South Africa. Homicide rate is 45 per 100k, one of the highest in the world. Their HDI is 0.71—“high,” but way lower than you’d expect for a country with their natural resources and economy. Why? Gap in access to health care for low-income neighborhoods, where crime is highest. We supplied their government with a customized HDI breakdown that highlighted “neighborhood-level HDI” instead of national—turns out, in Cape Town’s gang-controlled areas, life expectancy is 52, which is more like a low-income country, while the wealthy suburbs have a life expectancy of 82. That gap is why the national average is dragged down, and why crime is so tied to HDI here—unequal access to basic needs makes crime worse, and crime makes those gaps even bigger.
Wait, but what about countries with high crime but decent GNI? Let’s take Brazil. Their GNI per capita is around $15,000, which is middle-income, but their HDI is 0.75—“high,” but not as high as you’d think. Their homicide rate is 22 per 100k. We looked at their HDI components: health is 0.78, education is 0.68, standard of living is 0.83. The education score is the drag, and that’s directly from crime. Kids in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas miss 12 school days a year on average because of shootouts or gang patrols. That adds up to almost a month of school a year—over a child’s primary education, that’s a year and a half lost. No wonder their literacy rate is 8% lower than Uruguay, which has a similar GNI but a homicide rate of 5 per 100k.
I get why a lot of people miss this: HDI is a national number, so it hides the local stuff. But as an HDI supplier, that’s exactly what we focus on—custom breakdowns that show where crime is hitting HDI the hardest, so governments and NGOs can target fixes. For example, when we worked with the UN on a project for Honduras (homicide rate 36 per 100k, HDI 0.62), our client didn’t just want a national HDI number—they wanted to know which municipalities had the biggest gaps between potential HDI (if crime was low) and actual HDI. We found that in the 10 most violent municipalities, the education sub-index was 0.45, vs. 0.72 in the safest ones. That told them to prioritize youth job training in those areas, not just more police—because if you give teens a way to make money without joining gangs, both crime and HDI go up.
Another thing: crime doesn’t just affect people who are victims. It affects everyone’s choices. A small business owner in a high-crime area can’t expand because they’re scared of break-ins, so they don’t hire more people. A parent can’t take a better job in another city because they don’t want their kid moving to a neighborhood with higher crime. That means standard of living (GNI) doesn’t grow as fast, which is another drag on HDI. We saw this in Guatemala: their GNI per capita has grown 1.2% a year since 2015, but if crime was at the global average, we calculate it would have grown 2.1% a year. That extra 0.9% adds up over time—more money for schools, more hospitals, better transit.
I know a lot of people will look at this and think, “Yeah, that makes sense, but what’s the data actually say?” Let’s talk correlation vs. causation, because that’s where a lot of HDI debates get messy. UNODC’s 2023 Global Study on Homicide found that a 10% increase in homicide rates is linked to a 0.02 drop in HDI within 5 years—controlling for GDP, education spending, and health spending. That’s a causal link, not just a correlation. We tested that with our HDI datasets: in countries where homicide rates dropped 10% between 2018 and 2022, their HDI went up 0.02 on average. In countries where homicide rates went up 10%, HDI went down 0.015. That’s consistent, no matter how you adjust for other factors.
Now, let’s address the big myth: “High HDI means no crime.” Nope. Take the US, which has an HDI of 0.92 (very high, top 20). Their homicide rate is 6.8 per 100k—twice the global average. So what gives? HDI in the US is dragged down a bit by inequality: Black Americans have a life expectancy 7 years lower than white Americans, and their homicide rate is 15 per 100k. So even though the national average is high, high crime in marginalized communities pulls down local HDI, and that’s a big part of why the national HDI isn’t higher. It’s not that high HDI eliminates crime—it’s that high HDI (when distributed) gives people options that reduce crime.
This is where our role as an HDI supplier gets super important. A lot of our clients don’t just need a number—they need to make a case for funding. If you can show that a 5% drop in crime would raise your country’s HDI by 0.01, that’s a big deal for getting international aid, or convincing local governments to spend on social programs instead of more prisons. We do customized HDI projections that tie directly to crime rates, so our clients can show exactly what they’ll get for their money.
For example, a few months back, a city government in Mexico reached out to us. They had a 0.72 HDI, a homicide rate of 38 per 100k, and they wanted to invest $20 million in youth centers. We crunched the numbers: if that investment reduced teen crime by 15% (a realistic number from similar programs), their HDI would go up 0.012 in 3 years. That’s enough to move them from “high human development” to “very high,” which would make them eligible for better trade agreements and more foreign investment. They signed on, and we’re helping them track the HDI changes as they go.
I want to be clear: this isn’t saying crime is the only factor in low HDI. Corruption, war, lack of access to clean water—all of those matter too. But what we’ve seen over and over in our work is that crime is a multiplier. It makes all other HDI problems worse. If your school has no textbooks, adding crime makes it impossible to get kids to class. If your health care is underfunded, crime makes people afraid to use it, so it’s even less effective.
So, what does this mean if you’re someone who uses HDI for decision-making? Don’t just look at the national number. Dig into the components, look at local crime rates, and see where they overlap. If you’re a business owner considering a new market, check the HDI of the region you’re operating in, not just the country average—high crime in a specific city can make a market that looks good on paper actually risky for employees and investments. If you’re a policy maker, prioritize programs that tackle both crime and HDI at the same time, not just one or the other.
At the end of the day, HDI is supposed to be about people, not numbers. Crime is one of the most immediate ways people’s access to health, education, and a better life gets cut off. Our job as an HDI supplier is to make that link clear—no fancy jargon, no confusing spreadsheets, just actionable data that helps people make things better.
If you’re a government agency, NGO, or business that needs customized HDI reports, projections, or local breakdowns tied to crime rates, we’re here to help. We work with clients all over the world, no matter the size, and we build our reports around what you actually need to make decisions.
Components Sourcing REFERENCES
UNDP Human Development Report 2023
UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Global Study on Homicide 2023
World Bank World Development Indicators 2022
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