Community Portal August 2010

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Community Portal from the month of August 2010. See this months news and events in the up-to-date Community Portal

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In the Spotlight: Newsweek ranks nations by economy, politics, health and quality of life
Newsweek.jpg

Newsweek Ranking Top 100 Countries Globe Image.JPG

Forget the world cup, the Olympics, even the miss universe pageant... Newsweek ranks nations according to economy, health, politics and quality of life. See articles:

 The World's Best Countries (the rank)

A Newsweek study of health, education, economy and politics ranks the globes true national champions. 

Happiness Is...

The GDP measures everything except that which makes life worthwhile.

How We Ranked the World

Forget the world cup, the Olympics, even the miss universe pageant. These are the globe’s true national champions.


The World's Real Winners

Statistics can measure only so much. To enjoy life's more particular pleasures, move to one of these lucky nations.

With Best Countries Like These…

Why cold, dark, small, and depressive nations top the ranking



Community notice board 

The community notice board is a place for the community to interact. Feel free to post questions and comments here.



Media

See in the section below contains news articles and blogs that have been released this month.


Progress in the News (August 2010)

The founder of the Centre for Well-Being, an independent think tank at the New Economics Foundation (NEF), in London, Marks is particularly keen to promote a balance between sustainable development and quality of life. Watch the video.


The US comes second in a new quality of life index designed to be mathematically objective.


Women in Beijing feel they have a low sense of happiness and a relatively low quality of life, according to a survey released by Women of China magazine and the Hua Kun Women Survey Center on Tuesday.


Homeowners are more active in their communities, benefit from improved educational opportunities and report higher levels of self-esteem and happiness when compared to renters, according to leading research.


Indices, data, GDP, happiness: “Good practices” for comparative reports when using data?


New Apple iPhone application aims to map UK happiness


Women in their 40s were found to be the happiest class in Korea, while men in the same age ranked at the bottom, according to a study of the Korean Psychological Association.


Warren Buffett likes to say that anything good that’s ever happened to him can be traced back to the fact that he was born in the right country—America—at the right time. And it’s true: while remarkable individuals can be found in any nation on earth, certain countries give their citizens much greater opportunity to succeed than others at certain points in time


China on Tuesday hailed the country's economic might after it overtook world number two Japan in the second quarter but said it still had tens of millions of people living in poverty.


For most of the last seven decades, which is to say about as long as economists have been calculating what’s now called “gross domestic product,” it’s been criticized for being, well, too gross.


American workers with lengthy commutes are more likely to report a range of adverse physical and emotional conditions, leading to lower overall scores on the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index.


Policymakers should make employment generation and raising people's income top priorities to boost consumption


Fewer Americans rated their lives positively in July than did so in any other month so far in 2010, resulting in the Gallup-Healthways Life Evaluation Index score dropping to 49.6, after reaching a record high of 50.8 in June.


The headlines were grim, and a blow to India’s self-conception as a rising economic power. “New poverty index finds Indian states worse than Africa,” announced an Indian newspaper.


"We must be able to continue accessing the data that is uniquely available through the Canada census if we are to improve the lives of all Canadians" says the Honourable Roy J. Romanow, Chair, Canadian Index of Wellbeing Advisory Board.


Economists and policymakers increasingly acknowledge that national output in the form of gross domestic product should not be the only key indicator to measure economic development.


Replacing the gross domestic product (GDP) with another measure of economic output holds distinct advantages, says the World Bank former chief economist and Nobel Prize winner, Joseph Stiglitz.


A new iPhone app is being used to collect happiness data as part of an LSE research project


Society should gain economically and in well-being from the sharing of S'pore's growth


As many as 14.6 million Americans are unemployed, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. That means 14.6 million people have been dealing with the losses that come with unemployment: the loss of financial stability, of identity, and of their normal daily routine


"Wellbeing" is co-written by Tom Rath and Jim Harter, both of the Gallup Organization. Rath is the best-selling author of "StrengthsFinder 2.0," and Harter has authored more than 1,000 research studies. The purpose is to provide people with tools to actually improve their overall well-being. This starts with an understanding of well-being including its elements, a way to measure well-being and most importantly actions that will actually improve well-being.


Misguided images of sacrifice may be putting people off living more sustainable lifestyles. But reversing that may require new measures of success and happiness, say Tom Levitt and Kara Moses


Greece’s international lenders cleared the way Thursday for Athens to receive the next installment of its bailout package, in the latest sign that the crisis surrounding European finances was starting to ebb, Suzanne Daley and Matthew Saltmarsh report in The New York Times.


What is the point of working such long hours, messing up the environment, allowing our health, community and family to fall into dilapidation just so we can have more stuff? Gallup, a marketing research company, surveys states in the US (Washington ranks #7 or so) and countries on our planet, and issues reports rating countries (Denmark is all smiley faces, US falls between 11 and 20 in any given year).


Progress seen over several decades in narrowing the educational achievement gap between black and white students has remained stalled for 20 years, according to data analyzed in a new report.


Although Bhutan might seem like a small primitive society in comparison to tech-savvy Japan, the latter insists the tiny Himalayan nation has some valuable lessons to share.


Highlights from last month

America, are you happy? The emotional words contained in hundreds of millions of messages posted to the Twitter website may hold the answer.


In considering the risk and the increasing evidence of the toll that rapid economic development is already taking on Asia’s environment, economists and other experts in Asia have taken up the call to re-examine the prominence of economic growth as a measure of policy success, particularly the use of gross domestic product.


Ah, summer: time to relax and enjoy yourself. According to the New Economic Foundation (NEF), however, enjoying life is a complicated business. The chart above shows the responses of several demographic groups to questions about their wellbeing. “To what extent do you get a chance to learn new things?”, for example, or “How much time during the past week have you felt tired?”



Blogs on progress (August 2010)

With Earth Overshoot Day 2010 coming up fast upon us, and every day's activities past that unsustainably depleting the planet's resources, it seems appropriate to ask whether there ought not be a better way of assessing the impact of the economy on the environment. After all, chasing Gross Domestic Product hasn't served particular well so far creating an ecologically sustainable society. Surely there's a better way.

United States based Newsweek magazine has ranked living conditions in 100 countries around the world and in the magazine’s analysis, Nigeria was judged to be second to the worst while Finland is the best.


French president Nicolas Sarkozy (seen here enjoying an afternoon on the beach) thinks we should. And he enlisted the help of two world-class economists to help him figure out how...


Bhutan claims to be one of the happiest nations on earth and is one of the original promoters of "gross national happiness" as a serious socio-economic indicator, but an actual study on this stuff was just released by Gallup. Once again, the Scandinavians come out on top in life satisfaction


Money can buy happiness, but that is often not enough, as a recent Gallup poll indicates. As more economists, researchers, and even global leaders like Nicolas Sarkozy suggest, gross domestic product (GDP) is not sufficient for measuring economic health. While the measurement of GDP has its value and will never go away, experts have suggested alternate metrics like a “triple top line” or a “gross national happiness.”

Sure, economic indicators are important measures of how were doing, but they don't tell the entire story.


At Duncan Green’s blog, there is a fascinating back-and-forth on the UN’s new Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) between its co-creator, Sabina Alkire, and the World Bank’s Martin Ravallion. This is very much a live debate in development circles. The MPI is a descendant of the earlier Human Development Index and is similar to the various Unsatisfied Basic Needs indices long used in many countries.



Highlights from last month 

The things that we value most seem to be spending time with those we love, a fulfilling job, a healthy life in a safe and secure environment, access to a good education and health care, time in the sunshine enjoying nature and Australia’s beautiful landscapes, the right to believe and vote 2 according to our values and a sense that we are part of a community.


When Too Much Rigor Leads to Rigor Mortis: Valuing Experience, Judgment and Intuition in Nonprofit Management


The number of unemployed Americans has more than doubled in the past two years. Unemployment is now worse than at any time since the Depression of the 1930s. Millions of people have lost their homes to foreclosure. And tens of millions more have lost their savings, their pensions, and their retirement security.


A sprawling international survey aimed at gauging what makes people happy or contented has found some not so surprising universal truths: More money does make people say they are happier, but a broader sense of positive feelings or well-being springs mainly not from material possessions but instead from social relationships — decent work, a loving family, a recognized place in a community.


Progress papers and reports released this month


Debates

This is more of a back and forth than a debate. The subject is the recently launched Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI). Duncan Green, renowned blogger for the Oxfam blog From Poverty to Power, gives a brief overview of the new index. World Bank research director, Martin Ravallion criticizes the MPI for two key reasons, firstly the aggregation of indicators to a single index and secondly the choice of weights for the index. Finally Sabina Alkire, director of the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) and co-creator of the Index, defends her work and responds to both previous posts. For further background information, see Multidimensional Poverty Index


Background and introduction to the debate: The Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) has been working for years to try and develop such metrics, and they recently launched the ‘Multidimensional Poverty Index’ (MPI), which will feature in this year’s UNDP Human Development Report, celebrating its 20th anniversary. I’ll briefly summarize it here, before unleashing an exchange of guest blogs between the World Bank and OPHI.


Martin Ravallion is Director of the World Bank’s research department, the Development Research Group. 


Sabina Alkire responds to the previous posts by Martin Ravallion and Duncan Green. 


Newsletters

In this issue: Introduction from the OECD Chief Statistician, Martine Durand; A strategic overview of the OECD's contribution to the Global Project; Measuring Progress in Italy; Highlights from the 3rd OECD World Forum on "Statistics, Knowledge and Policy; Using DevInfo to Measure the Progress of Societies; Arizona Indicators; The UNDP HDR Report: 20 years on. Released July 1st 2010


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