“Social Progress Index – 2014” Released: Canada Rank: 7th, and U.S. Rank Behind at 16th

Catch Fareed Zakaria "GPS" on CNN today (4-20-14)  when he interviews Michael Porter, Professor at Harvard School of Business and Chair of the Advisory Board on the newly released  "Social Progress Index 2014" .  (The free reports will be posted HERE (see link) and in our Subscriber's Library, and Social Progress Index 2014 Report e)

http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2014/04/19/how-u-s-is-lagging-on-quality-of-life/?hpt=hp_t2

Social Progress Index: http://www.socialprogressimperative.org/data/spi

[Caesi Bevis: "LOVE (!!!) this Social Progress 2014 Report - What a wealth of high quality research reporting!"]

The Social Progress 2014 Report researched, analysed and evaluated the counties based on:

• "Basic Human Needs" (Nutrition and Basic Medical Care, Water and Sanitation, Shelter, Personal Safety)
• "Foundations of Well Being" (Access to Basic Knowledge, Access to Information and Communications, Health and Wellness, Ecosystem Sustainability) and
• "Opportunity" (Personal Rights, Personal Freedom and Choice, Tolerance and Inclusion, Access to Advanced Education.)

. "So if you look at the Social Progress Index, on the whole, what's striking is the top countries are New Zealand, Switzerland, Iceland, these small countries. But basically then a lot of European countries and Canada beat the United States. The United States is 16, Ireland is ahead of it, Japan is ahead of it, Britain is ahead of it, Germany is ahead of it." (Michael Porter)

From the Social Progress Report: 

"The top three countries in the world in terms of social progress are New Zealand, Switzerland, and Iceland. These three countries, closely grouped in terms of score, are relatively small in terms of populations. They score strongly across all social progress dimensions. The remainder of the top ten includes a group of Northern European nations (Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark), Canada, and Australia. Together with the top three, these countries round out a distinct “top tier” of countries in terms of social progress scores.

"A notch lower is a second tier of countries that includes a group of 13 countries, ranging from Austria to the Czech Republic. This group includes a number of the world’s leading economies in terms of GDP and population, including five members of the G-7: Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan, the United States, and France.

"The next level of social progress is a third tier of countries, ranging from Slovakia to Israel. This diverse group of nations includes countries at sharply different levels of economic development, ranging from Costa Rica (which significantly out-performs its rank in terms of GDP) to the United Arab Emirates (which has one of the highest measured GDPs per capita in the world but is ranked 37th in terms of SPI). Clearly high GDP per capita alone does not guarantee social progress.

"At the next, fourth, tier is a large group of approximately 50 countries ranging from Kuwait at 40th to Morocco at 91st. These countries are closely bunched in terms of their overall Social Progress Index score, but have widely differing strengths and weaknesses.

"A fifth tier of countries, ranging from Uzbekistan (92nd) to Pakistan (124th), registers substantially lower social progress scores than the fourth. Many of these countries also have low GDP per capita, but some are much more highly ranked on GDP per capita.

"Finally, a bottom tier of eight countries registers the world’s lowest levels of social progress, from Yemen (125th) to Chad (132nd). The Social Progress Index provides evidence that extreme poverty and poor social performance often go hand-in-hand.

"Among regions, Europe, North America, and Oceania (Australia and New Zealand) are the best
performing regions on overall social progress. Sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia, and South Asia are the worst performing regions."

For "highlights" on the 116 page Report, see these pages: (Page numbers "match' the PDF page number - not the number in the Report. For the number in the report - subtract "3 pages". I.e PDF page 91 = Page 89 in the Report.)

"My Favorite Page"  - Page 88 -90 - Full breakdown of the Countries by their scores on Basic Human Needs, Foundations of Well Being, and Opportunity

"Worst Pages" for Information Clarification: Page 69 (jumbled "mess"!), Page 92 - list of numbers - with no reference for what these mean) - was this supposed to be  a legal-sized page and it goes with the country list????), 

• Page 17: Executive Summary. Ranking list for the countries, showing GDP
• Page 30: Figure 1.2 / Social Progress Index indicator-level framework
• Page 45 (same as Page 17): Table 2.1 /Social Progress Index 2014 results (Canada scores higher at #7, U.S. at #16)
• Page 49: Figure 2.1 By Region
• Page 55: Social Progress Index Overperformers and Underperformers (Countries) -  (New Zealand, Finland and even Jamaica(!) score higher than the U.S. and Canada for "outperforming". )
• Page 64 - 65 Figures 2.12 and 2.13: Country Score comparison between New Zealand and the United States on Strengths and Weaknesses - (U.S. is in the "red zone" in many areas for  meeting Basic Human Needs, Foundations in Well Being, and Opportunity)
• Page 69: Figure 2.15 Life Satisfaction vs. Social Progress Index ("Zooming in on this" - this page is still a "mess" of jumbled up names of countries sitting on top of each other - when viewed in FireFox or Chrome browser). It "looks like" (?) Denmark, Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand
• Page 78: Case Study on New Zealand
• Page 92: APPENDIX: 2 - Scorecard Summary by Country - shows "red"(weakness), "yellow" (neutral), and "green" (strength) scores.

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