OK, WE'RE NUMBER ... UM... WHAT?

The wingnuts and the nationalist dustbunnnies won't like this at all but I suppose it will give them another reason to dislike the U.N.

The U.N. released it's Human Development Report for 2007 and on the Human Development Index, defined as:

The human development index (HDI) is a composite index that measures the average achievements in a country in three basic dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life; access to knowledge; and a decent standard of living. These basic dimensions are measured by life expectancy at birth, adult literacy and combined gross enrolment in primary, secondary and tertiary level education, and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in Purchasing Power Parity US dollars (PPPUS$), respectively.

the best of all possible countries (America) doesn't come out on top!



TABLE
1 Monitoring human development: enlarging people’s choices . . .
Human development index
HIGH HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
1 Iceland 0.968
2 Norway 0.968
3 Australia 0.962
4 Canada 0.961
5 Ireland 0.959
6 Sweden 0.956
7 Switzerland 0.955
8 Japan 0.953
9 Netherlands 0.953
10 France 0.952
11 Finland 0.952
12 United States 0.951
13 Spain 0.949
14 Denmark 0.949
15 Austria 0.948
16 United Kingdom 0.946
17 Belgium 0.946
18 Luxembourg 0.944
19 New Zealand 0.943
20 Italy 0.941
21 Hong Kong, China (SAR) 0.937
22 Germany 0.935
23 Israel 0.932
24 Greece 0.926
25 Singapore 0.922
26 Korea (Republic of) 0.921
27 Slovenia 0.917
28 Cyprus 0.903
29 Portugal 0.897
30 Brunei Darussalam 0.894

The report notes that HDI is not a very good measure of discriminating between highly developed countries and recommends using the Human Poverty Index. That turns out worse for the U.S. On that scale, we are 17th among the highly developed countries.