Where are People More Equal and Healthier

when talking about standards of living, GDP, Gross Domestic Product is often mentioned and most travelers realize that it is not a good indicator of the quality of life. Most educated people in this world know that Quality of Life measures much more than your income, even though it does count a lot. Availability of Leisure activities including Arts, Literature and Music count towards good living. Consumption in the form of Material and non material goods is taken into account. Personal Health is important to most people wherever they live. and all educated people would opt to live in a more equal society such as France,or in one with at least with some semblance of it, such as USA..

Beyond GDP? Welfare across Countries and Time

Charles I. Jones, Peter J. Klenow NBER Working Paper No. 16352 Issued in September 2010 NBER Program(s): EFG We propose a simple summary statistic for a nation’s flow of welfare, measured as a consumption equivalent, and compute its level and growth rate for a broad set of countries. This welfare metric combines data on consumption, leisure, inequality, andmortality. Although it is highly correlatedwith per capita GDP, deviations are often economically significant: Western Europe looks considerably closer to U.S. living standards, emerging Asia has not caught up as much, and many African and Latin American countries appear farther behind. Each of the four components we introduce plays an important role in accounting for these differences. when thinking of Egalitarian societies, we dont think of Asia (with the exception of Japan) or Russia first, always think of USA or Europe. In fact there is a fairly good correlation between Egalitarianism and General Welfare and income of the countries: Australia, Sweden, Norway are on the top, while most Asian countries lag far behind. Even countries which have higher GDP such as Singapour, Brunei in Asia and the Gulf countries in the Middle East, fail to make the chart when it comes to a Good Quality of Life .. In view of the current debate of Gross national Happiness, these revelations are of interest