Which countries combine high quality of life and strong equality?
I’m looking for perspectives on which countries most effectively combine high quality of life with low social and economic inequality.
You might want to look at the IHDI, inequality-adjusted human development index.
It takes the life expectancy, years of education, and GNI (PPP) per capita, and adjusts it for inequality.
Ideally it shouldn't even take GNI into account, imho (but an economic type-agnostic system, that takes the environment into account as well).
The top 15 is:
The IHDI still has some issues, though, like not taking workplace democracy, environment and sustainability, and public transit into account. Had that been done, Spain probably would rise quite a bit higher.
I'd also add that a lot of these countries have very strict immigration policies.
There's the Gini coefficient , which is an index for social inequality. Its easier to spot the blue countries and guess if you'd like to move there.
Edit: although looking at the map, its strange to see India and Japan having the same color. Anecdotally, I think the gap between rich and poor is much greater in India than in Japan, education and drinking water for example. Ive lived in both countries, and I think India should be yellow or orange, like southeast Asia.
Nordic countries are the best example. A lot of Europe might fit depending on how low "low social and economic equality" is defined.
Looking at this data Norway seems to have low levels of economic inequality, low rates of poverty, and a high median disposable income (behind Luxembourg but around that of France and Austria).
Its far from perfect, but I imagine social inequality for stuff like gender and race is pretty low, officially speaking at least. I get the feeling that Scandinavians can be a big negative about foreigners, but I have zero firsthand knowledge on that.
Norway admittedly has gigantic, relatively recent, oil and gas reserves that allow it to fund all sorts of social programs. Not saying those are bad or anything, just not a particularly exportable model.
Except that the Nordic model has been replicated across all the Nordic countries, of which only Norway has vast natural resources.
And even then, Norway, under the policies of the Nordic model, was already quite rich before it discovered oil.
It's actually pretty exportable. There's a lot of countries out there that have natural resources that should be the property of the people instead of wealthy individuals.
Interestingly enough, Norway was already doing quite alright before they discovered the oil - they were at 10th place amongst all European countries. The oil has given them additional wealth, but it has become somewhat of a national myth that the oil is the sole reason for Norway's success, leading to their current reluctance to spin the industry down, despite it running fully counter to Norway's self-image of a green nation.
Plus immigrant friendly, I guess.
Plus immigrant friendly, I guess.
I mean, this is exactly why I kinda side-eye Lemmings when they are like "why did you choose to move to 'such a shithole'¹ like the US, isn't China much better", (¹their words btw, not mine) like... (first of all, I didn't even choose, my parent did) lol I'd go to Norway if they took us, but no they don't lmao, the US was our only option for emigration... it was either this or stay in mainland China with all that pollution stuff and Hukou bullshit and crowded, and hard to find income.
I don't know from experience, and I haven't researched it, but that kinda sounds like Canada.
Maybe Germany.
you have an aparthied on your list? lol i mean yes off course israelis themselves are happy to enjoy unchecked privileges and ethnic supremacy, while palestinians get ethnic cleansing and genocide.
Most European countries.
Not really. In most European countries inequality is still huge, with service jobs earning less than a living wage.
You and tubulartittyfrog have basically the exact opposite comments
Xandar
Is that real or is it like Narnia?
Sir Thomas Moore's Utopia fits this bill if we assume for the moment that slaves don't count toward the equality aspect, beings slaves and all.
There are graphs in the book The Spirit Level which show exactly this. The two things correlate. From memory Iceland, Japan and maybe Poland do well, or at least they were when the book was published.
New Zealand has good QoL but does have issues with inequality with the Maori (original Polynesian settlers). They are strict about immigration which tries to help reduce immigrant inequality. Australia has better economic QoL, but there is no wildlife in NZ that will kill you.