Reading development indicators: internet use, electricity, literacy and the HDI

The four indicators

• People using the internet (World Bank code IT.NET.USER.ZS): the share of the population who used the internet in the last three months, from the International Telecommunication Union.
• Access to electricity (EG.ELC.ACCS.ZS): the share of the population with access to electricity, from the SDG 7.1.1 electrification dataset of the World Bank.
• Adult literacy (SE.ADT.LITR.ZS): the share of people aged 15 and over who can read and write a short simple statement about their everyday life, from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics.
• Human Development Index: UNDP’s summary of a long and healthy life, knowledge and a decent standard of living, on a scale from 0 to 1.

The World Bank publishes the first three under the CC BY 4.0 licence and names their producers, the HDI comes from UNDP’s Human Development Report under CC BY 3.0 IGO.

Read the year

These indicators are not measured every year everywhere. Literacy, for example, comes from censuses and household surveys that may be years apart. Anthrotempo shows every value with the year it refers to and never fills in the years between. When you compare two values, check that their years are close enough to mean something.

Denominators

A share is only meaningful with its base. Internet use and electricity are shares of everyone, literacy a share of adults aged 15 and over. That is why the site counts literacy among 100 adults, not among 100 people.

What they do not say

A national average hides differences within a country, between regions, cities and villages, and between groups of people. An index like the HDI combines several dimensions into one number, so two countries with the same value can differ a great deal in each of them.

Last updated 26 October 2026