Sorry, but Canada was never the No. 1 place to live

For much of the 1990s, Canada topped the United Nations’ Human Development Index (HDI). Politicians declared we were the best place in the world to live. This year, Canada slipped to 11th place. What happened?

The HDI captures three dimensions of human development: health, measured by life expectancy, income and education. Since 1990 ahandful of countries, such as Norway and Australia, have crept ahead of us in the life expectancy tables. This accounts for some of our declining performance. However the differences in health scores between Canada and its rivals are so small that they have little impact on the overall rankings.

Publié dans The Globe and Mail