At Bloomberg View Eric Roston realizes, somewhat to his horror, that the United States is not an Anglo-Saxon country:
The Social Progress Index released this week is compiled from social and environmental data that come as close as possible to revealing how people live. “We want to measure a country’s health and wellness achieved, not how much effort is expended, nor how much the country spends on healthcare,†the report states. Scandinavia walked away with the top four of 128 slots. Denmark scored the highest. America came in at 18.
Our index score was practically identical to Japan’s and higher than France’s or Portugal’s. Look at the table included in the post closely. What do the Scandinavian countries plus Switzerland, Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Germany have in common that Japan, the United States, France, and Portugal do not?
I don’t know, it looks to me like the criteria were put together by anti-American Europeans, and some countries got caught in the cross-fire.
Bloomberg is wrong to state that the “lowest marks come in the categories of “tolerance and inclusion†[ranked 23rd] and “health and wellness.†[ranked 34th]”
The lowest mark is in “nutrition and basic medical care (ranked 36th)” due primarily to the mortality rate of the mother or infant during child birth.
For subcategories, its lowest marks are for homicide rate (ranked 70th), suicide rate (ranked 82nd), biodiversity and habitat (really?) (ranked 73rd), greenhouse gas emissions (ranked 60th), and religious tolerance (ranked 92nd). When asked “Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with your freedom to choose what you do with your life?â€, 75.48 percent of Americans said “satisfied.” (ranking 65th).
Religious intolerance is interesting given how many Western countries have legal preferences for a state religion, but it appears that the U.S. ranks low because the study relies on U.S. tracking of crimes with a religious motivation. A lot of countries aren’t tracking this stuff, which is informative in a different way.
And, as I have documented in the past, a considerable portion of that is a consequence of low birth weight due to substance abuse by the mother during pregnancy.
It’s actually weird since quite a few of the countries in the list still have established churches.
Yeah, there’s something weird there. Some things, like homicides, I can see, but biodiversity and habitat? The US has almost as much acreage in our National Park system as the entire country of Germany. That doesn’t include all the other protected public lands.
For religious tolerance the US only rates a 2, the same as Iran, France, Turkey, Jordan, Uganda, Egypt, CAR, etc. Kuwait is a 3 and a
4 contains a ton of African basketcase countries like Chad. What a load of horse-pucky. Someone should ask them why there aren’t people fleeing religious persecution in the US for Chad, Rwanda or Liberia.
There are all sorts of problems with this index.
Some of the differences are from the exaggerated effect of small numbers. The U.S. ranked 53rd for primary education because 98.04 percent of children were enrolled in primary education. I can’t find the original data source to explain why it’s not 100%, but I doubt there is any material difference btw/ the U.S. and the countries ranked above it. And it may be as much about statistical methodology.
PD,
It could be homeschoolers. Department of education estimates that about 3% of k-12 children are homeschooled.
Something of which I presume many Americans are unaware is that homeschooling is a violation of UN accords to which the US is a signatory. It’s a strange world out there.
@Andy, it could be. I finally found the source of the data and its just noisy; the U.S. rate bounced between 96.86 percent and 99.76 percent the last 15 years. The UK has bounced btw/ 97.71 percent and 100 percent during that period. This is UNESCO data that looks like it merely re-reports numbers published by countries that report the data and then does household surveys in less developed countries. I would be surprised if the OECD countries are actually counting the same things.
Optimal quality control for this data is “for all types of schools and education institutions, including public, private and all other institutions that provide organized educational programmes.” So it does look like UNESCO will back out homeschooling.
I’d get thrown out of a meeting in which I attempted to use a study like this to substantiate any position.