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I never agree with these publications, even though they're sometimes entertaining to read. Main thing... quality of life is so subjective. Sure you can look at life expectancy, crime etc. In reality, it's impossible to know the quality of life without living there and it also depends on your income level and your desires etc.
Who said it was about "quality of life"?? This is about human development. The statistic is composed from data on life expectancy, education and per-capita GDP. There is nothing unbelievable here.
Why this years report make the countries HDI goes down in the 2009 report Australia was .970 now it's .937 Brazil was .813 now its .699 whats up with that
No surprise at all for the composition of the top ten, but the order intrigues me - I'm sure it's a great place, but I struggle to see how for example New Zealand is that much more developed compared to elsewhere in the space of just one year. Per capita GDP would be dependent on currency fluctuations, right? It's been all over our news this week about Ireland having to be bailed out, but according to this we're bailing out the most developed country in the EU!
I thought I mentioned this, but part of why there was a such a big shift up for the US is because they changed how they figured the education axis of the index. (The development index goes on health, wealth, and education I believe) Now they place value on average years of schooling, before they were more focused on literacy and school attendance.
Well even now Americans tend to go to college more than people in most nations. (That seems to be changing, but our people over 40 are still probably more likely to have been to college than say Koreans or Irish over 40) I've always heard that in many countries people of lower academic ability go straight to vocational school or work. In the US college/University in some ways is the vocational school as I know many who mostly go their for skills they feel they'll need at a job.
And if you "adjust for inequality" Americans do less well. However most things I've read indicate Americans in the top-20%, in wealth and/or education, are some of the smartest, happiest, best living people on the planet. Consider 20% of us is like 60 million people we contain a fairly large nation of successful and well-educated people. We also contain a fairly large nation that's living a life equivalent to Turkey or Bulgaria or something. (Despite how that sounds I'm not Left-wing.)
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