2004 UN Human Development Index published

[anitram]

The new yearly index was released today, can be found here.

Canada has leapfrogged from eighth to fourth place in the United Nations' "Human Development Report 2004" while the United State slipped a notch and Ireland nudged Switzerland from the top 10 list.

The 367-page report by the U.N. Development Program released Thursday, said Dublin skipped from 12th place last year over Denmark, which plummeted to No. 17.

The top 10 this year are Norway, Sweden, Australia, Canada, Netherlands, Belgium, Iceland, United States, Japan and Ireland.

The bottom five of Burundi, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Sierra Leone remained unchanged.

 

[melon]

The GOP is determined to make the U.S. the Christian version of Iran, so I'm not surprised we dropped a level. The fearmongering alone is enough to drop collective human development here. Get Bush out of the picture, and I'm sure we'll rise again.

Interesting how Canada jumped so much, but good for them. At this rate, I'm not too far behind!

Melon

 

[STING2]

US Standard of Living increased from last year, but not at a rate to overtake anyone ahead of it from last year or enough to continue to rank ahead of Canada. Canada was ahead of the USA 2 years ago, behind the USA last year, and now ahead again this year.

An interesting statistic I noticed that Ireland now has the 3rd highest Per-Capita GDP in the world, just ahead of the USA at #4. Norway is now in the #2 position and unbeatable Luxembourg continues to be #1 by a very wide margin. In standard of living though, Luxembourg is #15.

 

[valentina]

Ehm, where's Italy?