The Sultanate of Oman achieved high rankings in the Human Development Report of 2018, released by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). It advanced four positions from the previous year to be ranked 48th among 189 countries and the fifth in the Arab and Gulf countries. For the first time since its inclusion in the report, the Sultanate is listed with the countries with very high human development this year.

The (NCSI) has said that the Sultanate obtained a value of 0.821 in the human development index, with value ranging from 0 to 1, to be included in the group of countries with very high human development (0.8-1.0). Other classifications include countries with high human development (0.700 - 0.799), countries with medium human development (0.550 - 0.699), and countries with low human development (0.550 to 0).  The annual report is a brief assessment of human development, measuring the average achievements of a country in three key dimensions of human development, namely long and healthy life, access to knowledge, and a decent standard of living.  The improvement in the access to knowledge index is measured on the basis of development, dissemination and improvement of education and, as well as the efforts made to reduce cases of dropouts from basic education and combat illiteracy. It is measured by the average number of years in schooling and the expected number of years in education.

In the report, the Sultanate was ranked the third in the Gulf, with an increasing from 8.1 in 2016 to 9.5 in 2018 in mean years of schooling index. Also an increasing from 13.7 in 2016 to 13.9 in 2018 in the expected years of schooling index. In the index of life expectancy at birth, which shows the level of health services coverage, quality and impact on the decline in crude death rates and under-five mortality rates and infant mortality, the Sultanate ranked third in the Gulf, with life expectancy of 77.3 years . With regard to the extent of access to the resources needed to achieve a decent standard of living, the average GDP per capita in the Sultanate was US$36,290. This achievement is in the context with the upward trend of the Sultanate since its inclusion in the Human Development Index since 2000. The Sultanate got 0.704 points in the year 2000. Since then, the index continued to increase, from 0.793 points in 2010 to 0.821 points this year.