Ms. Yanchun Zhang is the Chief Statistician at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), where she leads the production of the Human Development Index and other composite indices. She has more than twenty years of quantitative research experience across various economic and sustainable development topics and has published articles in peer-reviewed journals.
Before joining the UNDP’s Human Development Report Office, she worked at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the World Bank's Development Research Group, and held academic positions.
She earned her Ph.D. and M.A. degrees in Economics from the University of Virginia, USA, and a B.A. in Economics with honours from Shanghai Fudan University, China.