Quote:
Originally Posted by tvdxer
The Happy Planet Index factors in various environmental / ecological factors into their calculations, so that explains why the U.S., Canada, etc. rank so low (and probably why current drug trafficking havens like Honduras and Guatemala rank so high).
|
Yes and no. One of the reasons for these weird results is that there are many non-equivalent ways to aggregate multiple factors into an index.
I downloaded the data on the HPI website and used a much simpler method than what they actually did. First, I standardized the 3 factors they take (life expectancy, happiness and ecological footprint) so that they all have an average of 0 and a standard deviation of 1, something very common in statistics. Second, I summed those three factors, multiplying footprint by (-1) to keep up with the assumption that higher footprint = bad.
Denmark goes from #110 to #57. It is the country that moved up the most.
United States goes from #105 to #59.
Iceland goes from #88 to #44.
Belgium goes from #107 to #63.
Canada goes from #65 to #22.
Australia goes from #76 to #33.
Singapore goes from #90 to #48.
Netherlands goes from #67 to #27.
Finland goes from #70 to #31.
Ireland goes from #73 to #34.
Tadjikistan goes from #43 to #91. It is the country that moves down the most.
Pakistan goes from #16 to #58.
India goes from #32 to #74.
Madagascar goes from #49 to #89.
Bengladesh goes from #11 to #50.
Nepal goes from #58 to #95.
Yemen goes from #68 to #105.
Phillipines goes from #25 to #61.
Morocco goes from #42 to #78.
Malawi goes from #72 to #108.
I am not even questioning the criteria, just picked a different way to aggregate them.
Here is the new top 10 and the new rank for a few other countries not listed above. (old rank in parentheses)
1. Costa Rica (1)
2. Israel (15)
3. Panama (7)
4. Norway (29)
5. Venezuela (9)
6. Switzerland (34)
7. New Zealand (28)
8. Belize (4)
9. Chile (19)
10. El Salvador (5)
16. Argentina (17)
17. Brazil (21)
79. China (60)
20. France (50)
21. Germany (46)
28. Italy (51)
26. Japan (45)
14. Sweden (52)
15. UK (41)
I believe my results make a lot more sense.