Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, May 28, 1993 TAG: 9306010193
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Of course. Countries with higher per-capita gross national products tend to have healthier, better-educated citizens with the economic power to make choices about their lives.
But do national wealth and high living standards, or relative poverty and low living standards, always go hand in hand?
No. Some societies do better than others at translating wealth into higher living standards for their people.
That's the implication, anyway, of a recently published United Nations report that ranks the world's nations according to a "human development index" - a measure of the health, education and disposable income of their citizens.
The 1993 report shows anomalies among the industrialized nations. Japan, third in per-capita gross national product, is first in its human-development index. Switzerland, first in per-capita gross national product, is fourth in its citizens' living standards as defined by the UN index.
The United States ranks only 10th in per-capita gross national product, but to its credit is sixth in the world in its human-development index. Canada does even better: second-highest living standards in the world, behind only Japan, while only 11th in per-capita gross national product.
Such disparities among the industrialized nations are paltry, though, when compared with differences among the developing nations.
This is partly because the label "developing nations," apart from the false implication that all undeveloped nations are on the road toward development, is almost too broad to be meaningful.
In both its affluence and its living standards, for example, "developing" Barbados - 34th in the world in per-capita gross national product, with a populace averaging 8.9 years of schooling - is much more like, say, "developed" Iceland than bleak Somalia or Afghanistan.
Still, Barbados' rank in living standards (20th) isn't hugely above its 34th ranking in per-capita gross national product. And the low human-development indexes of Somalia and Afghanistan (166th and 171st, or dead last, respectively) parallel those countries' economic poverty (171st and 169th, respectively, in per-capita gross national product.)
The big discrepancies between wealth and living standards are elsewhere.
For example, in the Middle East.
Kuwait's per-capita gross national product ranks 15th in the world, higher than the Netherlands, Australia or Britain. Yet its human-development index, says the UN report, ranks a mere 52nd. Similarly oil-rich Saudia Arabia and Iran offer similarly wide disparities: The former is 31st in wealth, but only 84th in living standards; Iran is 59th in wealth but only 103rd in living standards.
Such disparities are not limited to that region. South Africa, for example, is 57th in per-capita gross national product but only 85th in living standards.
The presence or absence of democracy seems to have something to do with it. Kuwait is rich in petrodollars, poor in democratic institutions. The conclusion is reinforced by the case of Costa Rica. That small Central American nation, perhaps the stablest democracy in Latin America, ranks 42nd in its human-development score despite a per-capita gross national product that's only 76th in the world.
But the democracy link is not absolute, either. It does not explain the performances of non-democratic China (101st in living standards, much better than its 142nd ranking in wealth) and Cuba (75th in living standards, though only 101st in wealth).
A more complete answer might be that there's no single key to the good life. Rather, it's a combination lock - a question both of a society's overall wealth and of a reasonably broad distribution of the benefits of that wealth.
Even without democracy, it is possible to have wealth, as in Kuwait or Saudi Arabia. Even without democracy, it is possible to have a broad distribution of the benefits of what wealth there is, as in Cuba or China. But without democracy, to have both is very difficult if not impossible.
by CNB