The "standard of living" component of HDI is literally GNI per capita PPP (basically the same thing as GDP per capita, with a few minor adjustments).

The other components are just life expectancy and educational attainment.

The educational attainment one is interesting, all the countries at the top have free post-secondary... Does a PhD do more for the nation than an entrepreneur who creates a unicorn and hires 10k engineers?

Also life expectancy is a lagging indicator...

>Does a PhD do more for the nation than an entrepreneur who creates a unicorn and hires 10k engineers?

As someone from an EU country which has an oversupply of PhDs, says, definitely not. I'd much rather have more entrepreneurs and job opportunism than more broke PhDs with fancy degrees.