Standard of living ranking

[Shanis]

Yo, I've just read an article about a ranking that is made every 3 years I think. In the ranking they compare the expected average life span and number of an illiterates in different countries, they even developed an index to calculate to have a number to comper (index goes from 0 (very very poor) to 1 (best possible), but none is able to get a 1 xD). I just felt like telling you about it cause it's kinda interessting

Ranking (just part of it):

Last Position: Niger
Position 25: Greece
Position 24: Hong Kong
Position 23: Singapore (last time position 6)
Position 22: Germany
Position 21: Great Britain
Position 20: New Zeeland
Position 19: Lichtenstein
Position 18: Italy
Position 17: Belgium
Position 16: Denmark
Position 15: Spain
Position 14: Austria
Position 13: USA
Position 12: Finland
Position 11: Luxemburg
Position 10: Japan
Position 09: Switzerland
Position 08: France
Position 07: Sweden
Position 06: Netherlands (last time position 1)
Position 05: Ireland
Position 04: Canada
Position 03: Iceland
Position 02: Australia
Position 01: Norway

So this is the Ranking. I hope it's easy to read and the notes with "las time position..." are based on last study 2006, countries with no notes have same positons as last time so no changes.

[darksyndrem]

This doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me....is Position 25 best or really bad?

[Shanis]

Compared to the other 186 countries (niger has position 186) it's very good^^

[noodle]

What's your source? Last time I say a Quality of Life ranking, Ireland and Switzerland were top!

[Shanis]

My source is an article at msn info site.

[SvanteH]

Hail Sweden It's a really good country.

[Shanis]

yeah, but I wonder why germany is worse Great Britain, Italy and Spain. I always hear about teenagers getting pregnant, suicides due to mobbing, etc. of those countries :/

[Naoko]

Interesting article, thanks for sharing. I'm just glad they didn't try to use the GDP per capita as a measure of a country's standard of living. I cringe when I see those as all they do is a show how productive the country is compared to the actual state of life there. Though I always wonder where studies like this get their information from. Whenever I see a survey, I'm like "What the..no one ever asked me ; ;," lol.

[Naoko]

Originally Posted by Shanis

yeah, but I wonder why germany is worse Great Britain, Italy and Spain. I always hear about teenagers getting pregnant, suicides due to mobbing, etc. of those countries :/

Well, that's because the factors they are using deal with literacy rates and the average life span. Getting pregnant, and other life crises/hardships don't necessarily affect the mortality ratio. Suicide, yes...but I doubt it's such a high number as to seriously affect the rankings. That is, unless people are jumping off buildings and hanging themselves every 5 minutes...O_o

[Shanis]

Originally Posted by Naoko

Well, that's because the factors they are using deal with literacy rates and the average life span. Getting pregnant, and other life crises/hardships don't necessarily affect the mortality ratio. Suicide, yes...but I doubt it's such a high number as to seriously affect the rankings. That is, unless people are jumping off buildings and hanging themselves every 5 minutes...O_o

That may be right, I didn't consider the actual mass of people of that countries.