There was a time, way back in the 20th century, when the US of A and Canada ranked in the top 10 countries on the United Nations Human Deveopment Index. In fact, for something like five years in a row, Canada was No. 1
[Wut? Ed.] with the US around No. 5. Citizens (word chosen with care) of North America (excluding Mexico) were healthier, wealthier, and better-educated than those of any other region.
Sadly, those days are gone forever. Since the triumph of "liberal progressivism", North American standards of living have fallen below those of northern Europe.
It's true that the HDI for the whole world have declined, particularly since 2020, due to Covid, climate hysteria, the greenscam and other factors. However, the Europeans are recovering, whereas under the terminally woke governments in Washington and Ottawa, things just get worse and worse.
The Human Development Index is one of the most widely used measures of countries' development. It gauges progress in terms of societal outcomes, including life expectancy at birth, expected and average years of schooling and gross national income per person. The latest figures, released yesterday, show that the global HDI is rising again, but progress has been slow and uneven.
The countries shown in darkest squa are those which score highest on the HDI.
The Economist has published a table showing how the 194 countries tracked by the UN compare. The left column shows the HDI score (1.00 would be perfect). The middle column shows life expectancy at birth. The right column shows expected years of schooling. We don't have room to show the whole table or even the top 20 countries, so have excerpted just Nos. 16 through 22.
Embarrassing, isn't? [Not to Brandon or Blackiie McBlackface, evidently. Ed.] The country with the highest Human Development Index, for the second year in a row, is... wait for it... Switzerland! Cue cries of "They're Number One! They're Number One!"
The Swiss score is boosted by high incomes and long life expectancies. Other countries in western Europe have some of the highest scores. Some parts of Asia also do well, with Hong Kong and Singapore making it to the top ten.
Elsewhere on Turtle Island -- especially in South America, the Middle East and Africa -- things are worse. Countries such as Peru, Colombia, Libya and Lebanon have made little progress since the global HDI started to fall in 2019. Living standards in Ukraine (100th) and Russia have also dropped. War-torn Yemen, poor and indebted Belize, and Micronesia, an island country at risk of being swallowed by rising sea levels, all peaked in 2010 and have declined every year since. Here are the Bottom 10.
Walt notes that 9 of the bottom 10 are in sub-Saharan Africa. The 10th is Yemen, at the south end of the Arabian peninsula, where a Muslim civil war has been going on for years. That's where the Houthis come from. Have you heard that name recently?
We return now [Quickly, please. Ed.] to the Excited States of America, which is fighting its own cultural and political civil wars. The War on Poverty, however, is over. We lost! Here's how the American HDI looks, county by country.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 46.2 million American people were living in poverty in 2010, and the poverty rate reached 15.1%, the highest in 52 years. In 2020, the year in which Senile Joe was (allegedly) elected, the poverty rate climbed by 0.9 percentage points to 11.4% from 10.5% in 2019. Do you really think that, as Joe claims, things have gotten better since then? Really?!
Ask yourself: What would it take to get the US of A back into the Top 10 on the Human Development Index? How can we Make America Great Again? Well, there's your answer... right there!
