Social Indicators
Life expectancy: Life expectancy is the average period that a human will live for. Knowing the average life expectancy of a country is a great way of distinguishing whether or not it is developed or still developing. This is because developed countries have much easier access to the basic essentials that every person needs to survive e.g. food, water, clean air and health care. In turn, the toughness of being able to access these basic essentials are what contribute to an individual's life expectancy.
Literacy rates: The literacy rate is the percentage of a countries population that is able to read and write. From knowing a countries literacy rate, you can determine the percentage of people that have/had access to education. Commonly, when education is easy to access, it leads to more people being able to read and write. For this reason, developed countries have a higher literacy rate percentage than developing countries because access to education is easier.
Child Mortality Rates: The child mortality rate of a country refers to the percentage of children/infants under the age of 5 that have died. Knowing the child mortality rate of a particular country is an efficient way of measuring human well-being because it can reflect the state of a countries environment. Also, it shows the level of health care a country has. Developing countries tend to have higher child mortality rates because of their harsh environments and low levels of health care while developed countries have low child mortality rates for the opposite reasons.
Suicide Rates: Suicide mortality rate is the percentage of people in a country that take their life. War, poverty, religious oppression, and being denied freedom of speech are only some of the main reasons why people choose to commit suicide. The majority of these issues happen more often in developing countries than in developed countries. Ultimately, people take their life because they don't want to live anymore (they are "unhappy"). Suicide mortality rate is a measure of human-wellbeing because a person’s happiness has a huge impact on their overall well-being.
Obesity rates: The obesity rate of a country is measured by how many people have an abnormal/excessive amount of fat in their body that may affect their health. Generally, developing countries have much lower levels of obesity compared to developed countries. This is mainly because, in order to get obese, a person’s food intake every day must be substantial. In developing countries, people struggle to get one meal a day let alone three! In developed countries, food is much easier to access therefore making it easier to eat three meals every day. The obesity rate is an effective measure of human-welling because it can approximately show how much food each individual is every day eating in that country.
Economic Factors
GPD/Capita: Essentially, GDP per capita is the total amount of money made in a country divided by the population. However, GDP per capita does not account for the different sizes and populations of various countries. Nevertheless, GDP can still be used to roughly estimate the average income of a working citizen. Knowing the approximate average income of each person in a country can help identify whether or not they can afford food, water, shelter and health care etc. GDP per capita is useful for measuring human-wellbeing because it roughly shows if each person can afford basic essentials. In turn, a person’s ability to obtain basic essentials directly affects their state of human-wellbeing.
Unemployment rates: The unemployment rate is the percentage of people in a country that are unemployed. The unemployment rate of a country is calculated by dividing the number of unemployed people by all of the people working in the labour force. By knowing the number of people that are unemployed, you can find out a lot of things about that country. In my opinion, using the unemployment rate to find out how poor a countries people are is the best way to measure human-wellbeing. This is because when a person is unemployed and they have a family to provide for, it is next to impossible to afford food, water and shelter etc. Not having these resources can deeply affect a person’s human-wellbeing.
Agricultural land: Agricultural land is the percentage of a country's land that's used for breeding livestock and producing crops. Typically, developing countries tend to have more agricultural land compared to developed countries because it's their only source of income. However, some developed countries also have heaps of agricultural land because they are more technologically developed than the developing countries. Therefore, the percentage of agricultural land can be used to measure human-wellbeing because it can show how technologically advanced a country is. In our modern day society, a country with minimal technology would struggle to survive therefore affecting its peoples’ human-wellbeing.
CO2 emissions from transport (% of total fuel combustion): CO2 emissions from transport is the percentage of fuel combustion from transport within a country. Most developed countries if not all have a higher percentage of fuel combustion from transport compared to developing countries. This is due to developing countries being under developed (technology wise), also because of how low their national economy is. Overall, CO2 emissions from transport can be used to measure human-welling because you can find out how underdeveloped a country is and a rough estimate of its' national economy. A country being underdeveloped (technology wise) is directly linked to human-wellbeing because its' people aren't able to fully utilize the environment around them.
Population Density: Population density (per sq. km of land area) measures how many humans there are per square kilometre within a country. Developing and developed countries both struggle with over population (developing slightly more). In developing countries, overpopulation can lead to living in a poor quality/small "housing" space. In developed countries, overpopulation can lead to their being limited schooling/job opportunities. In turn, population density is a measure of human-wellbeing because we can observe peoples living conditions, also we can tell how hard it is for a person to get a paying job in that country. Low living standards and lack of a stable job heavily affect an individual’s human-wellbeing.
Weighting of each indicator
1x Population Density: Over time, the population of most countries has increased by a substantial amount. In turn, this has led to many countries becoming overpopulated. In semi developed countries such as India and China, overpopulation is a major issue. When countries like this become overpopulated, living standards and access to basic resources become worse. However, I have ranked population density so low because people are still able to survive in overpopulated countries, also bad infrastructure can lead to over population.
2x Literacy rates: The literacy rate of a country is a somewhat important factor when measuring its' level of human-wellbeing. Knowing how to read and write can give a person many different job opportunities. When a country has a good balance of jobs in its' labour force its' economy and citizens will thrive. In turn, this will fasten the development and increase the average income of that country. However, uneducated people can still obtain jobs that provide a basic income to live off. For this reason, I have ranked literacy rate rather low on my index.
5x Child Mortality Rates: From knowing the child mortality rate within a country, you can tell how liveable its environment is and also its levels of healthcare. Generally, babies that die around birth die because they are not delivered in a "well structured" hospital. The main cause of death for infants between the ages of 1-5 is either under malnourishment or disease. From this, you can measure important factors of human-wellbeing such as health care and how liveable country's environment is. This is why I have ranked child mortality rates in the middle of my index.