Serbia takes 59th place among 187 countries in the Human Development Index (HDI) 2011 rankings, published by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

HDI measures the quality of life based on the data on life expectancy, mean years of schooling and incomes, as well as the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita.

Serbia took 62nd place in 2010, which means it advanced by three positions this year, the UNDP data showed.

The list is divided into four groups, each one comprising of about 45 countries assessed according to the degree of human development.

Serbia is in group two, which consists of countries with high degree of human development.

The group also includes Montenegro (54), Bosnia-Herzegovina (74) and Macedonia (78), as well as two EU member states, Romania (50) and Bulgaria (55).

Norway tops the list of countries with very high human development, as was the case nine times in the past eleven years, followed by Australia, the Netherlands, the U.S., New Zealand, Canada, Ireland, Liechtenstein, Germany and Sweden.

Out of the former Yugoslav countries, Slovenia takes 21st place, and Croatia 46th.

The third group of countries with medium human development include the fast growing economies like China (101) and India (134).

The countries with low human development are mainly those of the African continent.