“For decades, we have been on track to reach a very high human development world by 2030, but this deceleration signals a very real threat to global progress,” said Achim Steiner, UNDP Administrator. “If 2024’s sluggish progress becomes ‘the new normal’, that 2030 milestone could slip by decades – making our world less secure, more divided, and more vulnerable to economic and ecological shocks.” 

UNDP’s HDI includes additional layers of analysis to better understand what drives - and damages - development progress in each country. Adjusted for inequality, Thailand’s HDI score drops. On gender equality, by contrast, Thailand performs well. It joins Singapore, Brunei, Viet Nam, and the Philippines as a country where men and women enjoy similar levels of progress in health, education, and income.  

Thailand and Mongolia are the only two countries in the Asia Pacific region where women’s HDI outpaces that of men: the HDI for Thai women stands at 0.802, slightly higher than the HDI for Thai men of 0.795.  

When Thailand’s performance is adjusted to reflect its planetary impact - specifically, its carbon dioxide emissions and material footprint - Thailand’s score also drops slightly. However, with a planetary-adjusted HDI score of 0.726, Thailand performs best amongst ASEAN countries, reflecting the country’s commitment to climate action and nature-positive development.  

Faced with a global slowdown in human development, the report highlights new ways of driving positive change. It features the results of a new global AI survey that shows people are realistic yet hopeful about the change that AI can bring to human development. Half of respondents worldwide think that their jobs could be automated. An even larger share—six in ten—expect AI to impact their employment positively, creating opportunities in jobs that may not even exist today. 

Only 13 percent of survey respondents fear that AI could lead to job losses. By contrast, in low- and medium-HDI countries, 70 percent of respondents expect AI to increase their productivity, and two thirds anticipate using AI in education, health, or work within the next year.  

Around one in five of survey respondents report already using AI, illustrating that the democratization of AI is already underway. Two-thirds of respondents across lower human development countries anticipate using AI in education, health, or work within the next year, which reinforces the importance of closing electricity and internet gaps. 

“We hoped that this year’s human development data would signal a sustained recovery from the exceptional COVID-19 pandemic years. Unfortunately, what we see is a global human development slowdown,” said Niamh Collier-Smith, Resident Representative of UNDP in Thailand. “But there are multiple ways to bend the curve in the right direction, including with AI. Our global HDR survey shows that people perceive AI as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reinvigorate human development, and it calls on Thailand, as it calls on each country, to seize this opportunity today.”