If you think that most developing nations are hopeless — or, as President Trump reportedly said, that some of them are “shithole countries” — you should take a look at the World Bank’s new ranking of the world’s most promising nations: Most of them were basket cases not so long ago.
The World Bank’s Human Capital Index, released on Thursday, measures 157 countries according to their children’s knowledge, skills and health.
Its underlying rationale is that — in a world economy that relies more and more on mental work and increasingly less on manual labour — young people’s health and education standards will be the keys to economic progress. As robots and artificial intelligence take over growing numbers of low-skilled jobs, there will be a growing need for well-educated workers who can do more sophisticated work.