The breaking points of human development-the separating role of national borders

Abstract

The human development index (HDI) has been used for a long time for the complex comparison of individual countries (UNDP 2023). According to Waldo Tobler's “First Law of Geography,” the data of each country should theoretically be similar to the values of neighboring countries. At least if land borders are taken into account, since the role of maritime borders is difficult to interpret in terms of similarity between countries. In the following figure, I examine the differences in the human development index of each country, which I consider to be the breaking points of development. In the case of countries that have a land border between them, I look at the difference in the index and plot the border in terms of the difference. Of course, the difference is not only important in terms of size, but also in the extent to which countries with populations can be observed. Therefore, I modified the area of the countries in proportion to their 2023 population. The source of the data is worldometers.info, while the map work was created using the ScapeToad software.