The top ten countries on the Human Capital Index are Finland, Norway, Switzerland, Canada, Japan, Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, New Zealand and Belgium.
This year's report notes that talent, not capital, is the key factor linking innovation, competitiveness and growth in the 21st century. It also emphasises demographic changes and their assessment to allow for timely human resource planning. Economies with ageing populations face the need for better integration of young people, women, migrants and elderly workers into their country's labour force.
The Human Capital Index contains two horizontal themes -- Learning and Employment -- running across five vertical age group pillars of the Index (Under 15; 15–24; 25–54; 55–64; and 65 and Over). These two cross-cutting themes assess countries' success in developing people's skills and competences through learning and in deploying this acquired knowledge through productive employment. In other words, the Index assesses the size of a country's human capital investment gap and deployment gap.
The first horizontal theme -- Learning -- contains several sub-themes relating to education, namely enrolment in education, quality of education, education attainment and workplace learning. The other horizontal theme -- Employment -- records several dimensions of labour activity, such as economic participation, skills and vulnerability.
Croatia is included in a group of European and Central Asian countries that ranks second on the index globally, after North America. In this group the best ranked countries are Finland (1st), Norway (2nd) and Switzerland (3rd), and the lowest ranked are Albania (66th), Turkey (68th) and Moldova (71st).
Compared with other countries in Croatia's neighbourhood, Slovenia is ranked 15th, Serbia 50th and Macedonia 55th.
Croatia is well positioned in the first age group pillar, ranking 22nd in the Under-15 age group with regard to the basic education survival rate (10th) and the secondary enrolment gender gap (1st).
Croatia scored worst in the 15-24 age group, ranking 49th, because of the labour force participation rate (114th) and the unemployment rate (119th).
Other problematic areas included staff training services (113th) and the unemployment rate (90th) in the 25-54 age group. In the 55-65 age group and the 65 and Over group, the problematic area was the labour force participation rate (106th) and (113th) respectively.