The three best performing countries in the 2017 report are Norway, Finland and Switzerland.

The WEF defines human capital as the knowledge and skills people possess that enable them to create value in the global economic system.

The index ranks the countries on how well they are developing their human capital on a scale from 0-100 across four thematic dimensions and five age groups.

The four key areas of human capital development are capacity (formal education), deployment (application and accumulation of skills through work), development (formal education of the next generation workforce and continued upskilling and reskilling of existing workers), know-how (breadth of specialized skills-use at work).

Countries' performance is also measured across five distinct age groups or generations: 0-14 years, 15-24 years, 25-54 years, 55-64 years, and 65 years and over.

The report finds that the world has developed only 62% of its human capital as measured by the index. This means that nations are neglecting or wasting, on average, 38% of their talent.

Ranked ninth, Slovenia got an average score of 73.33. Norway secured 77.12, Finland 77.07 and Switzerland 76.48.