Do Inequality-adjusted HDI and Unintended pregnancy rate go together across countries?

Across 135 countries the link before adjusting for anything is r = -0.73, on a scale from -1 (opposite) to +1 (in step). A version that uses only each country's rank gives -0.73.

Does the link hold within countries over time, not just across countries?

There are not enough years of data within countries to check this over time.

Does Inequality-adjusted HDI cause Unintended pregnancy rate?

This analysis cannot answer that. It shows only that the two go together. A link between two country measures, adjusted or not, does not show that either one changes the other. Country figures also say nothing about individual people.

Inequality-adjusted HDI vs. Unintended pregnancy rate

Holds up after adjusting for income

Across 135 countries, Inequality-adjusted HDI and Unintended pregnancy rate rise and fall together at r = -0.73 (on a scale from −1 to +1, where 0 means no link). Comparing only countries with similar income (GDP per person) shrinks it to -0.28 (q = 0.044, allowing for the many pairs tested). Much of the first figure is that both measures rise with national income, but a weak negative link remains. Caution: direction is not consistent across regions.

Comparing countries across the middle half of unintended pregnancy rate, 34.4 to 87.6 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, inequality-adjusted hdi is worse by 0.253 points at the top of that range than the bottom. Comparing only countries with similar national income, the gap is 0.0479 points.

Link before adjusting (r)-0.726p = 2.2e-23 · 135 countries

After adjusting for national income-0.281p = 0.001 · likely range [-0.43, -0.12]

p, allowing for regions0.028standard error 0.098 · 7 regions

Check for luck (q)0.044across 14,952 pairs

How to read these.r runs from −1 (one goes up as the other goes down) to +1 (they rise together), and 0 means no link. Adjusting for national income means comparing countries with the same GDP per person, so differences in wealth can’t explain the link. Income is used in percentage terms, since an extra $1,000 means more to a poor country than to a rich one. p is how likely a link this strong would be if there were really none. Below 0.05 means it is unlikely to be chance. Very small values are written in short form: 1.1e-32 means a decimal point followed by 31 zeros and then 11, so very close to zero. The likely range is where the true figure probably lies, and a range that crosses zero means the link could easily be chance. Countries in the same region tend to resemble each other, so the third figure allows for that, which gives a fairer p. The standard error is the typical size of the error in r. Finally, testing this many pairs means some will look strong by luck alone. A q below 0.05 means this link is unlikely to be one of those.

Inequality-adjusted HDI · index, 0 to 1link with income +0.94 · proxy

Unintended pregnancy rate · per 1,000 women aged 15-49link with income -0.69 · high

Both of these rise and fall closely with national income, so a strong link between them before adjusting was close to certain. Read the adjusted figure, not the first one.

“Link with income” is how closely each measure tracks GDP per person across countries, from −1 to +1.

Every country as a dot

best-fit line line after adjusting

Four ways to measure the link

Method	r	p	Countries
Standard (Pearson), not adjusted	-0.726	2.2e-23	135
By rank (Spearman), not adjusted	-0.735	3.7e-24	135
Standard (Pearson), adjusted for national income	-0.281	0.001	135
By rank (Spearman), adjusted for national income	-0.245	0.004	135

The rank version uses only each country’s place in line, from lowest to highest, so a few extreme countries count for less. The adjusted and unadjusted versions use the same 135 countries: those that report both measures and GDP per person. So the gap between them comes from the adjustment, not from a change in which countries are counted. Drop in the size of r after adjusting: +0.445 (a minus sign means it grew).

How solid is it?

Leaving out one country at a time, r ranges from -0.306 (without SLB) to -0.253 (without AGO). The bar above shows that range on a scale from −1 to +1, with the solid line at the full result. The single country that moves r most: AGO (+0.029).

Fragile: this link may not hold up.

direction is not consistent across regions

Within each region

Countries are not separate, unrelated cases, and neighbors share a lot. A link that holds inside each region is far more believable than one that shows up only when comparing regions.

	n	r
East Asia & Pacific	21	+0.14
Europe & Central Asia	41	-0.07
Latin America & Caribbean	21	+0.03
Sub-Saharan Africa	42	+0.63

By income third

If the link shows up only in the richest third of countries, it is a feature of rich countries, not a general pattern.

	n	r
Poorest third	45	+0.15
Middle third	45	-0.52
Richest third	45	-0.34

By largest religious group

Countries grouped by a label they share, such as main religion, rather than by a number. Groups of fewer than twelve countries are not shown. These groups differ in income, region and history all at once. So a gap between them is a place to start asking questions, not an answer.

	n	r
Christians	91	-0.52
Muslims	25	-0.31

By last european coloniser

	n	r
France	21	+0.43
Never a European colony	14	-0.23
Spain	17	+0.08
United Kingdom	35	-0.22

Without outliers (countries far outside the middle half of countries on either measure, by more than one and a half times the width of that middle half): r = -0.281 after dropping 0 countries.

Two series, one country

Both measures over the years for one country you pick. The two charts are stacked so they share only the years along the bottom.

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Over time, within countries

Everything above compares countries with each other at one moment. This section compares each country only with itself over 0years. So a link here can’t come from anything about a country that stays the same, such as its history, geography, institutions or culture.

Not enough history inside each country to look at this over time. That needs countries measured for several years in a row, and at least one of these measures is measured too rarely.

The data

	index, 0 to 1	per 1,000 women aged 15-49	Years
Iceland ISL	0.923	32.6	2023, 2019
Norway NOR	0.909	34.2	2023, 2019
Denmark DNK	0.909	29.8	2023, 2019
Switzerland CHE	0.894	20.3	2023, 2019
Netherlands NLD	0.892	17.5	2023, 2019
Finland FIN	0.891	32.6	2023, 2019
Belgium BEL	0.891	21	2023, 2019
Germany DEU	0.89	21.3	2023, 2019
Sweden SWE	0.886	35.8	2023, 2019
Slovenia SVN	0.885	33.2	2023, 2019
Australia AUS	0.873	37.4	2023, 2019
United Kingdom GBR	0.869	36.2	2023, 2019
Czechia CZE	0.867	34.9	2023, 2019
Canada CAN	0.867	31.5	2023, 2019
Korea, Rep. KOR	0.857	34.5	2023, 2019

United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 2025
Bearak, J. M., Popinchalk, A., Beavin, C. et al. (2022), 'Country-specific estimates of unintended pregnancy and abortion incidence: a global comparative analysis of levels in 2015-2019', BMJ Global Health 7(3), e007151. Guttmacher Institute. Supplementary appendix, tables A3-A5.

Sources

Inequality-adjusted HDI

Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index

United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report Office · via Our World in Data · CC BY 3.0 IGO · updated annual · comparable from 2010 only

The HDI marked down for how unequally each of its three parts is spread within the country. The gap between this and the HDI is what inequality costs, and that is the number worth reading. The level itself is the HDI again, with its parts flagged the same way.

Unintended pregnancy rate

Unintended pregnancies per 1,000 women aged 15-49 (model estimate, 2015-2019)

Guttmacher Institute (Bearak et al. 2022, BMJ Global Health) · CC BY-NC 4.0 · updated one edition (2015-2019 estimates, published 2022)

The Guttmacher Institute's estimate of pregnancies that were not wanted then or not wanted at all, per 1,000 women aged 15 to 49, averaged over 2015-2019. Whether a pregnancy was intended comes from what women say in surveys, so it is an estimate built from those surveys and a statistical model. Each figure has a range: Uganda's is 145, but it could be from 123 to 169.

How this was computed

Data used: most recent value in 2010-2025; values come from 2019–2023. To adjust for income, each measure is first predicted from GDP per person (in percentage terms, on a log scale) with a straight-line fit. Only what is left over is then compared. This is called a partial correlation. The line is drawn the standard way (ordinary least squares), which picks the line that comes closest to all the countries at once. The error margins allow for countries in the same region resembling each other, using 7 World Bank regions. The q-value corrects for testing all 14,952 pairs at once, using the Benjamini–Hochberg method. Underlying data last updated DYB 2024. How the country data works · explore Inequality-adjusted HDI and Unintended pregnancy rate

This page shows that two measures go together. It does not show that Inequality-adjusted HDI changes Unintended pregnancy rate, or the reverse. These figures also describe countries, not individual people. See the ecological fallacy.