Economic Growth and Improvements in Living Standards in the World’s Smallest Economies

This chapter employs a synthetic Human Development Index (HDI) to evaluate not only the economic advances of the world’s smallest economies, but also improvements in human well-being. This is because the HDI is based on both economic and non-economic data. The classification of the countries under analysis based on the HDI enabled the identification of those with the highest level of socio-economic development and quality of life for their populations, as well as those that are the most neglected in terms of basic living needs. A comparison of HDI scores for 2000 and 2019 was conducted with the objective of identifying the smallest economies in the world where the most significant improvements in the quality of life of their inhabitants were observed.