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:
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Iceland (Nordics)
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Norway (Nordics)
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Denmark (Nordics)
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Switzerland (Central Europe)
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Netherlands (Western Europe)
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Belgium (Western Europe)
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Finland (Nordics)
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Germany (Central Europe)
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Sweden (Nordics)
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Ireland (Western Europe)
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Slovenia (Southeast Europe)
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Australia (Oceania)
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United Kingdom (Western Europe)
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Canada (North America)
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Czech Republic (Central Europe)
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 higher.
Acamon@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
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.
TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The only reason their society is that way is because it’s not diverse.
all the scandavaian counrties are having issues because of immigration is destroying their social harmony.
Steve@communick.news 2 weeks ago
Do you have sources you can cite?
In English if possible. Though I’ll understand if not, and make due with what you have.
jol@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
That’s not intirely true. Some people definitely are like that, like in any country. Others agree that if you work and pay taxes, you deserve all the same benefits.
MyBrainHurts@piefed.ca 2 weeks ago
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.
njm1314@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
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.
Meron35@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Except that the Nordic has been replicated across all the Nordic countries, of which only Norway has vast natural resources.
GissaMittJobb@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
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.