Vietnam's human capital index improves

Students of the Ha Huy Tap Secondary School in Vinh city, the central province of Nghe An attend the new school year ceremony 2020-2021 (Photo: VNA)

Hanoi - A new report by the World Bank Group pointed out that between 2010 and 2020, the Human Capital Index for Vietnam increased from 0.66 to 0.69.

This means a child born in Vietnam today will be 69 percent as productive when they grow up as they could have been if they enjoyed complete education and full health.

The score is well above the world's average of 0.56. It is higher than the average for East Asia and Pacific region, as well as for lower-middle-income countries.

An above average score has enabled Vietnam to reach 38th position among 174 economies in the 2020 Human Capital Index.

The index’s components include the probability of survival to age five, expected years of school, harmonised test scores, learning-adjusted years of school, adult survival rate and healthy growth (not stunted rate).

A breakdown of the index shows 98 out of 100 children born in Vietnam survive to age five; a Vietnamese boy or girl attending school at the age of 4 can complete 12.9 years of school, or high school, by the age of 18; and 76 percent of children are not stunted.

Vietnamese students received 519 points in Harmonized Test Scores (HTS), a level similar to countries like Sweden, the Netherlands, and New Zealand. HTS measures how much children learn in school based on countries' relative performance on international student achievement tests, where 625 represents advanced attainment and 300 represents minimum attainment.

Furthermore, 87 percent of 15-year-olds will likely live until the age of 60 in Vietnam.

According to the report, Vietnam’s Human Capital Index continues to be higher than the average for countries of the same income level despite the level of public spending on health, education and social assistance being lower than that of its peers.

In Southeast Asia, Vietnam ranked above Brunei (56th), Malaysia (62nd), Thailand (63rd), Indonesia (96th), the Philippines (103rd), Cambodia (118th), Myanmar (120th), Laos (126th) and Timor-Leste (128th).

The World Bank Group’s 2020 Human Capital Index (HCI) includes health and education data for 174 countries – covering 98 percent of the world’s population – up to March 2020, providing a pre-pandemic baseline on the health and education of children.

The HCI, first launched in 2018, measures the amount of human capital a child born today can expect to attain by age 18.

It conveys the productivity of the next generation of workers compared to a benchmark of complete education and full health.