“The Measure Of America”
Many people around the world – especially those in developing countries – think that the USA is a country in which everyone enjoys a good standard of living and has a long and healthy life. Of course, compared to most other countries on the globe, most Americans are exceptionally privileged, but the wealth and health of the United States is very unevenly distributed and many Americans genuinely struggle.
Consider these facts:
- While the United States has the second-highest income per head in the world, it ranks 42nd in terms of life expectancy.
- Despite spending $230m (£115m) an hour on health care, Americans live shorter lives than citizens of almost every other developed country.
- The Japanese can expect to outlive Americans, on average, by more than four years.
- Citizens of Israel, Greece, Singapore, Costa Rica, South Korea and every western European and Nordic country save one can expect to live longer than Americans.
- One in six Americans, or about 47 million people, are not covered by health insurance and so have limited access to health care.
- The US has a higher percentage of children living in poverty than any of the world’s richest countries.
- 14% of the population – some 40 million Americans – lack the literacy skills to perform simple, everyday tasks such as understanding newspaper articles and instruction manuals.
How do we know all this?
We know it because of a new report called “The Measure of America” funded by Oxfam America, the Conrad Hilton Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. This is the first-ever human development report for a wealthy, developed nation.
It introduces the American Human Development Index, which provides a single measure of well-being for all Americans, disaggregated by state and congressional district, as well as by gender, race, and ethnicity. The Index rankings of the 50 states and 436 congressional districts reveal huge disparities in the health, education, and living standards of different groups.
All the facts on this blog posting are taken from that report and you can ready a fuller analysis here.