ABSTRACT
A good guide to the quality of life available in a country is to measure not just wealth but also health and education. The UN’s Human Development Index (HDI) does this each year. It reveals the unsurprising insight that, to the extent that quality of life can be measured, richer countries offer more than poor ones. But among both rich and poor countries there are surprises. Some countries seem to be particularly effective at transforming their economic wealth into real benefit for their citizens. Many others are, however, much less effective – either because the political leadership lacks the will to do better, or because the country’s history has not included proper investment in the foundations of education and good health care, so it lacks the capacity. Like all national-level statistics, a country’s ranking on the HDI may obscure important internal differences. But when a country is ranked much lower on the HDI than its Gross National Income suggests it should be, this is a sign that there are severe social inequalities.
