The U.S. Now Ranks 19th in ‘Social Progress,’ With Finland and Canada Topping the List

The United States has fallen to 19th place in a global ranking of well-being, down three spots from last year. That’s according to the 2016 edition of the Social Progress Index, one of the most comprehensive international measures of well-being.

America was eclipsed by Belgium, Spain and France in the past year according to the measure, which evaluates countries on their ability to provide basic human needs (measures of water and shelter), the foundations of well-being (measures of health and education) and opportunity (measures of equality and personal rights).

The U.S. is the world’s largest economy as measured by gross domestic product, but the Social Progress Index was designed by those who see shortcomings in the traditional measure of GDP, because they do not take into account things like the health of the population, or crime, or the environment or even whether citizens have basic human rights. The index, for example, could be a better measure whether nations are making progress against the “Global Goals” of the United Nations.

Across a number of such “non-economic” measures, the U.S. fares particularly poorly for a rich nation, according to the index, because of its high obesity rate, high homicide rate, high level of traffic fatalities and unequal access to higher education.

U.S. citizens “are getting a pretty raw deal when it comes to translating the country’s wealth into social progress,” said Michael Green, executive director of the Social Progress Imperative, which produces the index.

Finland topped the index this year, followed closely by Canada, Denmark, Australia and Switzerland. The diversity of the countries atop the list underscores that there is not just one path to prosperity, said David Cruickshank, the global chairman of Deloitte, which is a partner in producing the index.

“Canada has a very different social structure, a much different race composition, quite different from the Scandinavian countries,” he said. While Scandinavian countries have much higher taxes than the U.S., Switzerland and Australia have fairly low taxes, he noted.

Criticizing GDP has a long and storied history. Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy famously lambasted GDP during his 1968 presidential campaign, saying GDP “measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.” The Economist and The Atlantic have splashed stories about the inadequacies of GDP on their covers. In recent years, GDP has climbed to new highs under President Barack Obama, and many conservatives too have turned to highlighting things not measured by GDP, such as falling median incomes, rising numbers of people on food stamps, or soaring levels of student debt.

The Social Progress Imperative has more information on the methodology and a detailed breakdown by country on its website.

Credit: Wall Street Journal