The report is based on the latest human development index (HDI) rankings, which rates 187 countries by life expectancy, access to education, and gross national income per capita.
Development can also be measured by social indicators such as life expectancy, access to clean drinking water, literacy rates, agricultural yields, and the quality of public-health services.
A recent United Nations study of life expectancy, salaries, access to health services, and educational standards rated Chile higher than any other Latin-American country.
The health factors included the incidence of chronic diseases, overall mortality rates, infant mortality rates, life expectancy and access to health care.
Yet we have among the lowest life expectancy, worst access to services, and highest rates of death from preventable disease and complications compared to other industrialized countries.
The nation's HDI score, Measure of America's attempt to track well-being, has more than tripled since 1960 thanks to increases in life expectancy and access to better education and health care.
Norway, Sweden and the Philippines take third, fourth and fifth place respectively in the index which looks at four key areas – health (life expectancy, etc), access to education, economic participation (salaries, job type and seniority) and political engagement.
Apart from income, useful indicators may include the consumption of certain foodstuffs such as protein, a measure of life expectancy, and access to basic amenities such as a safe water supply.
Measuring poverty is often based on snapshot surveys of income levels, but Deaton is lauded for a more sophisticated analysis, dating back to 1980, tracking groups or cohorts of the population and examining the improvements, or lack of them, in their wellbeing through their consumption of health services and their life expectancy and access to education.
An analysis of U.S. News Healthiest Communities data found there is a clear link between community health and well-being – meaning a place's overall performance in measurements of health, such as life expectancy and access to care, and in areas connected to health, such as economic performance and natural environment – and the racial and ethnic makeup of a community.
While over 90percentt of gaps in life expectancy and access to education have already been closed worldwide, women continue lag behind men at work and in politics.
