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NEPAL IS cheating its children. Every year it brings hundreds of thousands of them into the world, only to deny half of their future. The World Bank’s Human Capital Index, a measure of how well countries prepare the next generation for productive lives, gives Nepal a score of 0.50, meaning a child born today will enter adulthood with only half the economic potential she could have enjoyed had she grown up healthy, well-educated and properly equipped.
The verdict is built from three numbers: child survival, quality of education and health into adulthood. In each Nepal underperforms. Survival rates have improved; school enrolment is high; and life expectancy kisses 70. Yet a child who spends 12.3 years in school acquires the equivalent of 7.2 years of actual learning. A quarter of under-fives are stunted. Not one tier of the health system meets official standards. Provincial gaps are brutal: Bagmati’s children stand far ahead of Karnali’s, though both are heading towards underachievement.
The sums reveal a government unwilling to match ambition with investment. Spending on education is 3.7% of GDP, below UNESCO’s 6% benchmark. Health gets 2.1%—barely half the WHO’s recommendation. Countries with similar means have done better, making clear that inefficiency not poverty is the chief rot. The National Health Insurance scheme covers a quarter of the population and is riddled with execution failures. Households pay so much out of pocket for treatment that they must decide between medical care and keeping their children in school.
Nature, too, is turning against the young. Nepal ranks among the most polluted countries on earth. Airborne particulates exceed WHO limits tenfold, cutting down life expectancy by nearly five years and impairing cognitive development. The economic toll of dirty air alone equals 10.2% of GDP. Add climate change, natural disasters and epidemics, and the threat to health and learning multiplies. Yet disaster-response systems remain skeletal, and social protection covers too few.
The stakes could not be plainer. Human capital is the largest source of national wealth; Nepal’s share has shrunk since the 1990s while peer economies have grown theirs. If health and education matched high-income norms, GDP per person could nearly double. The blueprint for change—better spending, higher standards, cleaner air—is not secret. What is missing is the capacity and will to act.
Fail to fix this and the waste will be irreversible. Human potential cannot be stockpiled for later use. A child’s chance to thrive comes once, at a particular time, under particular conditions. Nepal is watching that window close on millions of futures, and pretending there will be another. ■
