Maybe not, but there is some sobering news in the UN Human Development Report 2021/2022, released this week. BBC report:
In the past two years, Nine out of ten countries went backwards United Nations Human Development Index. The effects of Covid-19, the war in Ukraine and climate change have been blamed for setting back global development.
Of course, COVID-19 played a role in the overall global results. While much progress has been made in COVID-19 vaccination, progress has been varied. While 72% of people in high-income countries are vaccinated against COVID-19, only 21% of people in low-income countries are vaccinated (as of 22 July 2022),
The HDI has three main components: (i) life expectancy at birth, (ii) educational attainment, and (iii) the economy as measured by GNI per capita. The countries with the highest Human Development Index are:
- Switzerland
- Norway
- Iceland
- Hongkong
- Australia
- Denmark
- Sweden
- Ireland
- Germany
- Netherlands
It can be clearly seen that the Nordic countries rank highly on the HDI (Finland ranks 11th). The United States came in 21st. Although the United States is one of the best performing large economies, life expectancy is lower than in other developed countries (77.2 years compared to 84.0, 83.2 and 82.7 years in Switzerland, Norway and Iceland, respectively). The U.S. HDI was 0.930 in 2019, but dropped to 0.921 in 2021. In fact, between 2015 and 2021, the U.S. HDI ranking dropped from 18th to 21st. Highly developed countries that rose more than 5 places between 2015 and 2021 included Ireland, the United Arab Emirates, Croatia, Turkey, Georgia and Thailand.
The country with the lowest HDI ranking is South Sudan, followed by Chad, Niger, Central African Republic, Burundi and Mali.
Other findings are that the world has become more negative, politics is more polarized, and people are generally more stressed.
please read full report Because there are a lot of interesting statistics.
