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Dataset · World Bank Group

Human Capital Index

4 years, 2010–2020 · 172 countries

The World Bank’s Human Capital Index asks a blunt question: how productive will a child born today be by the age of 18, given the schooling and health their country actually delivers? A score of 1 means complete education and full health, and no country is there.

This site holds every year from 2010 to 2020, read from World Bank Group’s own data and stored exactly as published.

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Human Capital Index · the file

Newest
Human Capital Index, 2020
Held
4 years · 597 rows
Licence
CC BY 4.0

014 years

Every year

Newest first. Each opens the full table for that year, and each downloads as a CSV.

2010bar height: countries covered, up to 1722020
Every year of Human Capital Index held on this site, newest first, with its download files.
YearCountriesChangeReadDownload
Human Capital Index, 2020Newest172+6September 6, 2026CSV
Human Capital Index, 2018166+10September 6, 2026CSV
Human Capital Index, 2017156+53September 6, 2026CSV
Human Capital Index, 2010103—September 6, 2026CSV

Every year in one file, one row per country per year: human-capital-index-all-editions-nations-inquiry.csv

023 columns

What’s in the file

Every column, what it holds, how it is stored and what its values look like — what a reader needs before opening the file.

Every column in the newest file of Human Capital Index: what it holds, how it is stored, and its range.
ColumnWhat it holdsStored asRange, 2020DistinctEmptySpread
CountrycountryNameThe country’s name, as this file spells it.Text—1720
ISO Codecountry_codeIdentifierThe ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 code, added by this site. Every table here joins on it.Text · 3 letters—1720
HCI Score (0–1)hci_scoreHeadlineThe headline figure: HCI score (0–1).Number · up to 15 decimals0.29163Central African Republic0.87913Singaporemiddle 0.563831710

Profiled from the newest file. Range: the lowest and highest value, with the country holding it when only one does. Spread: countries in ten equal steps from lowest to highest. A higher value is the better result.

03172 countries across every year

Who is covered

How many countries each year holds, continent by continent, who joined and who left, and which places this site covers that the dataset never has.

All regions
Countries in each year of Human Capital Index, by continent.
2010201720182020
Africa25454546
Americas15222828
Asia24434346
Europe37383839
Oceania281213
All103156166172

Who joined and who left

  • 2020
    + Belarus+ Brunei+ Bhutan+ Central African Republic+ Fiji+ Uzbekistan
  • 2018
    + Antigua and Barbuda+ Dominica+ Micronesia+ Grenada+ Saint Kitts and Nevis+ Saint Lucia+ Marshall Islands+ Palau+ Saint Vincent and the Grenadines+ Samoa
  • 2017
    + Afghanistan+ Angola+ Armenia+ Bangladesh+ Bosnia and Herzegovina+ China+ DR Congo+ Comoros+ Dominican Republic+ Ethiopia+ Gabon+ Ghana+ Guinea+ Guyana+ Honduras+ Haiti+ India+ Iraq+ Jamaica+ Kenya+ Kyrgyzstan+ Cambodia+ Kiribati+ Laos+ Lebanon+ Liberia+ Sri Lanka+ Mali+ Myanmar+ Mongolia+ Mozambique+ Mauritania+ Niger+ Nigeria+ Nicaragua+ Nepal+ Pakistan+ Philippines+ Papua New Guinea+ Palestine+ Rwanda+ Sudan+ Solomon Islands+ Sierra Leone+ El Salvador+ South Sudan+ Tajikistan+ Tonga+ Tuvalu+ Tanzania+ Vanuatu+ Yemen+ Zambia

04Provenance

Where it comes from

The path from the publisher to this page, and what was checked and changed on the way.

The site’s method
  1. 1 · Publisher

    World Bank Group

  2. 2 · Their file

    Human Capital Index 2020

  3. 3 · Read by this site

    September 6, 2026

    Imported by a script that parses each figure and writes it down unrounded.
  4. 4 · Stored as

    4 files, one per year

    Each downloads as a CSV, or every year together as human-capital-index-all-editions-nations-inquiry.csv
  5. 5 · Used on

    Its statistic page, and every profile it measures

Precision

The headline is stored to 15 decimals, as published.

Rounded by this site

Never. Tables on screen may show fewer decimals; the files never do.

Changed by this site

Reshaped into one row per country: regional and income-group totals are left out, only the columns listed are kept, each row gets its ISO 3166 code, and some country names are brought to one spelling. No value is recalculated, rescaled or rounded.

Pulled from the World Bank’s indicator API (HD.HCI.OVRL), covering 103 to 172 countries across the four editions.

05Reuse

Licence and credit

What the publisher’s licence lets you do, what it asks of you, and a credit line and citation ready to copy.

Every publisher’s terms

Licence · checked August 29, 2026

CC BY 4.0

  • Share and redistribute it
  • Adapt it and build on it
  • Use it commercially
  • Credit the publisher
  • Say what you changed

Share, adapt and use commercially. Credit the publisher and say if you changed anything.

A credit line

Source: World Bank Group, Human Capital Index, via Nations Inquiry.

Cite this dataset

World Bank Group. Human Capital Index, 2010–2020 [data set]. As held by Nations Inquiry, https://nationsinquiry.com/datasets/human-capital-index

The publisher’s own citation: World Bank. The Human Capital Index. Washington, DC: World Bank Group.

Plain-language summary, not legal advice. The licence text is what binds.

06Questions

Human Capital Index: questions and answers

What is the Human Capital Index?

The World Bank’s Human Capital Index asks a blunt question: how productive will a child born today be by the age of 18, given the schooling and health their country actually delivers? A score of 1 means complete education and full health, and no country is there.

Which years of the Human Capital Index can I download?

All 4, from 2010 to 2020, each as a CSV file, or every year together in one CSV.

Does World Bank Group rank countries on it?

No. World Bank Group publishes values only. The positions shown on this site are derived by ordering the published values, and are labelled as ours.

Can I use it commercially?

Yes, under CC BY 4.0, with credit to World Bank Group. The licence text is linked on this page.

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