There are questions a national average simply cannot answer. Why do two communities that share the same institutional framework, laws and broad public policies offer their residents such different prospects in life? Why does access to a good school, a nearby hospital, a safe neighborhood or a well-functioning municipality still depend on the canton where a person is born?

Costa Rica rightly stands out in Latin America for its human development achievements. But national averages can obscure as much as they reveal. They show us the bigger picture while often concealing the differences that shape people’s everyday lives.

The 2026 Cantonal Human Development Atlas, recently launched by UNDP together with the Costa Rican Institute on Drugs (ICD) and the National System of Information and Single Registry of State Beneficiaries (SINIRUBE), was created to bring those differences into view. Since its first edition nearly two decades ago, the Atlas has applied internationally recognized human development measurement methods at the local level. This latest edition draws on administrative data from all 84 cantons and brings together seven indices that offer different but complementary perspectives on well-being: health, education and standard of living, as well as inequality, gender gaps, overlapping deprivations, citizen security and, for the first time, territorial vulnerability associated with drugs and related activities.

The purpose of the Atlas is not to rank cantons from best to worst. Rankings can oversimplify complex realities and, too often, stigmatize the places they are meant to describe. Instead, the Atlas looks at territorial patterns and the stories they reveal—findings that have implications for the country as a whole.

The first is that inequality changes the picture. When human development is adjusted to reflect how its gains are distributed within each canton, nearly one-third of the cantons previously classified in the highest category move down a level. The number of cantons classified as having high human development falls from 38 to 26 once inequality is taken into account. This does not mean that Costa Rica has gone backward. It means that national averages were masking the people who have not fully benefited from the country’s progress.

The second finding is the close relationship between citizen security, vulnerability to illicit economies and human development. The new Drug and Related Activities Vulnerability Index shows that four cantons face very high levels of vulnerability, closely associated with deteriorating security. This suggests that the response to violence cannot be a matter of policing alone. Where vulnerability to illicit economies and insecurity are so closely intertwined, sustainable solutions will require a combination of prevention, social inclusion, education and a stronger institutional presence on the ground.

The third finding is that there is no single path to human development. There are territories where gains are being consolidated across multiple dimensions; others where challenges accumulate and reinforce one another, particularly in coastal and border areas; and others that are undergoing a process of transition.

A fourth group deserves particular attention: territories where high levels of human development coexist with growing risks of insecurity and vulnerability. Over time, these risks could undermine what today appears to be a well-established achievement.

Each of these territorial realities calls for a different response. Treating territories with very different circumstances in the same way can, in practice, deepen inequality.

This edition also offers a new perspective on artificial intelligence (AI). In a country where digital capabilities are concentrated in the Greater Metropolitan Area (GAM), AI could become a powerful multiplier of opportunities—in health, education, security and productivity. But it could also create a new form of exclusion for cantons that lack connectivity, digital tools or strong local institutions.

Anticipating that risk now, while there is still time to shape how these technologies are used, is itself a human development decision. Costa Rica’s digital future will be shaped across its territories, just as its development has been.

An analysis with this level of territorial detail—and one capable of anticipating emerging risks such as those associated with AI—is only possible because of Costa Rica’s strong public data ecosystem and its longstanding institutional tradition. UNDP therefore recognizes the contribution of public institutions, from statistical and electoral bodies to regulators and social security institutions, whose administrative records made it possible to calculate each of the indices that make up the Atlas.

When institutions share data, the entire country gains a clearer picture of itself. Evidence becomes more than a technical input; it becomes a public good.

This is at the heart of UNDP’s work in Costa Rica: putting knowledge at the service of public decision-making and working alongside the State and its institutions to advance human development through the power of data.

Ultimately, the Atlas is helping to advance a simple but urgent promise: that people’s opportunities should not depend on the canton where they happen to be born or live.

The data are there. The challenge now is to turn that evidence into better decisions.

The Atlas and its interactive platform are available to municipalities as they plan, to institutions as they target resources, to researchers as they generate knowledge, and to citizens as they demand accountability.