ABSTRACT
This book studies changing living standards in the ten Southeast Asian countries which are now members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), from the early years of the twentieth century to the early years of the twenty-first century. We know that in the second decade of the new millennium, these ten nations differed widely in terms of per capita gross domestic product (GDP). There was also considerable variation between them in other widely used development indicators such as adult literacy and life expectancy (Table 1.1). The Human Development Index (HDI), computed by the United Nations, is a weighted average of per capita GDP, life expectancy, adult literacy and years of schooling. This index ranked Singapore fifth in the world in 2015, while at the other end of the scale, Myanmar was ranked 145 (Table 1.1). In spite of these differences, most countries in Southeast Asia have experienced some improvement in their HDI score since the 1980s, and several have improved their ranking. All now fall into what is termed the medium human development group, or higher.
