Global Development By The Numbers

November 28, 2007 7:26 PM

The new UN Human Development Report is out. Lots of interesting stuff on climate change. But for me, nothing beats the Human Development Index, a number that means different things to different people.
posted by StrikeTheViol (8 comments total)

meet the new report, same as the old report. rich white people are enjoying their lives, poor brown ones not so much.
posted by kitchenrat at 7:40 PM on November 28, 2007

In your face, Norway! Finally, payback for the Old Covenant...
posted by Kattullus at 7:49 PM on November 28, 2007

Actually, the middling tan ones look like they're doing fairly well. Turkey made strides, as did Libya and Brazil...interestingly, the African nation of Gabon is now a better country to live in than Tajikistan.
posted by StrikeTheViol at 7:53 PM on November 28, 2007

I'm too busy to go through these, but I did give $50 to the bald guy at work for the Human Fund.
posted by crowman at 8:11 PM on November 28, 2007

Actually, after poking around, it appears there is a strong correlation between winter sports and human development, which is the only two things Canada really does well. Check out that great streak thru the '90's until Norway took over.

Maybe those Jamaican bobsledders were onto to something after all.
posted by crowman at 8:20 PM on November 28, 2007

Well, I've gone through the comments on that Scotsman piece, and worked out that it's all down to non-whites being stupid and lazy.

Now that we have that sorted out, we won't need more of these confusing statistics, right?
posted by pompomtom at 8:31 PM on November 28, 2007

Among the biggest jumps on the list:
* Mauritania (16 places)
* Saudi Arabia, Dominican Republic, Belize (15 places)
* Lesotho, Qatar (11 places)
* United Arab Emirates (10 places)
* Haiti, Libya, Turkey (8 places)
* Botswana (7 places)

Among the biggest losers:
* Lebanon (-10 places)
* Uganda (-9)
* Timor-Leste (-8)
* Equatorial Guinea (-7)

Now, it's really interesting that to see among the industrialized countries:
* France, Spain (+6)
while
* Luxembourg (-6)
* Belgium, United States (-4)
* Italy (-3)

It's also interesting to see that very few countries actually lost ground on the raw HDI, and the few that did are generally in their continental gutter. And on a continental breakdown, the differences are generally larger (due to a smaller sample) and it's harder to move up or down the list substantially, if at all.

But when you look at the list broken down into three classes (high, medium or low) of HDI or income, the bottom one is increasing and the top one is losing ground. I'd be interested to know how much there are common factors there such as climate change or immigration.

It definitely isn't as simple as whites going up and browns going down. In fact, it's overall giving a good impression of entropy.
posted by dhartung at 9:15 PM on November 28, 2007

People up, environment down?
posted by hoverboards don't work on water at 5:08 AM on November 29, 2007