Canada and the World
Current Events with a Canadian Perspective
Last update
19 November 2010
Human Development Reports
Every year the United Nations publishes
a report that draws comparisons among countries
Picking the best country in the world depends on individual interests. If you are a foodie, you’re probably going to choose France, Japan, or Italy. If social equality is important then you’re going to go for one of the Nordics – Sweden, Norway, or Denmark.
Perhaps, it’s all about beaches and warm weather – the tropical paradise. Then it’s going to be tough to beat French Polynesia, the Seychelles, or some of the islands in the Caribbean.
However, the gold standard in country comparisons is the Human Development Index (HDI) published annually by the United Nations.
United Nations Human Development Report
The folks at the UN pour over national statistics covering such things as poverty rates, gender equality, life expectancy, literacy, and a host of other areas.
Each category is assigned a numerical value between zero and one. The country with the top score is deemed to be the one with the highest level of human development.
The statisticians have been doing this for 20 years so they’ve refined the accuracy of the process.
From 1993 to 2000 Canada occupied first place, but it has slipped a little in recent years. The 2009 report placed Canada in fourth behind Norway (the city of Bergen is shown above), Australia, and Iceland.
Throughout the history of the report the bottom places have been filled almost entirely by African countries.
Human Development Index is Criticized
Not everybody is a fan of the UN’s attempt to rank countries statistically. One critic
is economist Bryan Caplan, an economics professor at George Mason University. He
writes from a strongly pro-
In an article published by the Library of Economics and Liberty (May 22, 2009) he criticizes the HDI for using a statistical model that doesn’t allow for improvements in highly developed states. Even though life expectancy continues to rise is countries such as Canada they can never score beyond the number one under this statistical system.
He writes that the system “effectively means that a country of immortals with infinite
per-
He says that all the HDI does is measure “how Scandinavian your country is.” However,
for a right-
Others dump on the index because it is a bit of a blunt instrument that reduces some issues that can’t be measured mathematically to raw numbers.
How to Improve Life at the Bottom
Encouraging economic growth in desperately poor countries would seem to be a way of lifting human development to a higher level. But a study by a couple of economists says that’s not how it works.
According to The Times of India (April 15, 2010) a 2010 paper by economists George Gray Molina and Mark Purser suggests “the empowerment of women may have a lot more to do with an entire country’s development than previously believed.”
Molina and Purser looked at development data from 1970 to 2005 and tracked improvements
in income-
Theory said that if national incomes rise so does such areas as literacy and quality of health care. The economists found no such linkage “thus undermining the common view that economic growth automatically leads to or at least is accompanied by human development.”
Simply shovelling money into economic development projects such as dams and railways
isn’t enough. If half a country’s population is subjected to suppression, as is the
case in many African and Middle Eastern states, then development goals will not be
reached.
Sources
“No Link between Growth, Better Life.” Rukmini Shrinivasan, The Times of India, April 15, 2010.
“Against the Human Development Index.” Bryan Caplan, Library of Economics and Liberty, May 22, 2009.
“Is GDP an Obsolete Measure of Progress?” Judith D. Schwartz, Time Magazine, January 30, 2010.
Image credits Trodel. UN Development Program
© Canada and the World, April 2010
All rights reserved
HAPPY PLANET INDEX
A major quibble with the Human Development Index is that it pays too much attention to income and not enough to subjective issues such as satisfaction with life.
The people at the New Economics Foundation (NEF) have tried to fix that.
They have created the Happy Planet Index (HPI), which combines such things as ecological
footprints with social and economic well-
NEF statisticians use Gallup polls, the World Values Survey, as well as financial numbers as their sources.
It turns out from the HPI that money indeed does not buy happiness. The top three places in the Index are filled by relatively poor countries: Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, and Jamaica.
The world’s richest countries do poorly on an index such as this. For instance Canada
places 89th, and Denmark 105th. The report’s authors write that life satisfaction
and life expectancy have risen in rich nations over the last 45 years “but it has
come at an earth-