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The world’s best country
Laza Kekic
From The World in 2005 print
edition
Why Irish eyes are smiling
Where
will be the best place to live in 2005? The World in
2005 turned to the Economist Intelligence Unit, which has
devised a 2005 “quality of life” index for 111 countries.
Result: Ireland comfortably tops the league. America, though
the second-richest country (behind Luxembourg) in GDP per
head, slips to 13th in quality of life. Britain languishes in
29th place.
It has
long been accepted that material well-being alone does not
adequately measure quality of life. Money matters, of course,
but surveys suggest that over the decades big increases in
income have translated into only a modest rise in
satisfaction. Although rising incomes and expanded individual
choice are highly valued, some of the factors associated with
modernisation—such as the breakdown of traditional
institutions and the erosion of family values—in part offset
its positive impact.
But
how to combine in a single, comparative statistic the factors
believed to influence people’s happiness? There have been many
attempts, none entirely successful: the factors selected, and
the weights assigned to them, tend to be arbitrary. Subjective
surveys of “life satisfaction” have been attracting growing
interest—especially since the evidence is that people in
different countries and cultures cite similar criteria for
being contented—but getting comparable surveys across many
countries is hard and there is too much margin for error for a
truly objective quality-of-life index.
So
ours takes a new approach. We use life-satisfaction surveys
(assembling the average scores for 74 countries) as a starting
point for weighting the various factors that determine quality
of life. A regression analysis suggests that as many as nine
indicators have a significant influence, and can be turned
into an equation explaining more than 80% of the variation in
countries’ life-satisfaction scores. The main factor is
income, but other things are also important: health, freedom,
unemployment, family life, climate, political stability and
security, gender equality, and family and community life. We
feed the factors into the equation, measuring them using
forecasts for 2005 where possible (in four cases) and latest
data for slower-changing indicators, such as family life and
political freedom. The resulting score, on a scale of one to
ten, gives the quality-of-life index. A full explanation of
the methodology and a full country ranking are available to
download here.
Ireland wins because it successfully combines the most
desirable elements of the new (the fourth-highest GDP per head
in the world in 2005, low unemployment, political liberties)
with the preservation of certain cosy elements of the old,
such as stable family and community life. Offsetting its poor
climate and, by rich-country standards, gender inequality are
a higher political stability and security. Even if GNP—not
available for all countries, but in Ireland’s case
significantly lower than GDP—is used to measure income,
Ireland still wins.
Britain, by contrast, mixes high income per head with
high levels of social and family breakdown; it comes bottom
among the 15 countries of the pre-enlargement European Union.
America ranks above the EU-15 average. Italy performs well but
Germany and France do not—belying the notion that big
euro-zone nations compensate for their economic sluggishness
with a better quality of life than America.
China,
for all the excitement over its development, still falls in
the lower half of the league. Proud Russians will be disturbed
to find themselves at the wrong end of the table. Bottom of
the lot is Zimbabwe, where things have gone from bad to worse
under Robert Mugabe.
In
1986, in response to an early attempt to measure well-being
across countries, The Times scoffed: “Can anyone really
assess, in mathematical or other terms, the value of living in
Britain?” Well, they can try—on the basis of what people
around the world themselves say about life satisfaction. No
doubt critics will poke holes in this index too. Except, of
course, in Ireland.
Laza Kekic: director, country forecasting
services, Economist Intelligence Unit
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