Kiwiblog

The Economist has published their 2012 democracy index.

Our score out of a maximum 10 is 9.26. Norway is top on 9.93. North Korea bottom on 1.08.

25 countries are classified as full democracies, 54 as flawed democracies, 36 as hybrid regimes and 52 states as authoritarian.

In terms of the global population only 11.3% live in a full democracy compared to 37.1% who live in authoritarian regimes.

NZ scores are:

• Electoral process and pluralism 10.00
• Functioning of Government 9.29
• Political participation 8.89
• Political culture 8.13
• Civil liberties 10.00

The UNDP has released their 2013 Human Development Index. New Zealand remains in 6th place with an HDI score of 0.919, just ahead of Sweden and Ireland.  Israel is 16th, Finland 21st and UK 26th.

At the bottom end are Congo and Niger.

All things said, no other place I’d rather live in.

The Economist reports:

IF YOU are a working woman, you would do well to move to New Zealand—or if that is a little out of the way, you could try one of the Nordic countries. To mark International Women’s Day, The Economist has compiled its own “glass-ceiling index” to show where women have the best chance of equal treatment at work. Based on data mainly from the OECD, it compares five indicators across 26 countries: the number of men and women respectively with tertiary education; female labour-force participation; the male-female wage gap; the proportion of women in senior jobs; and net child-care costs relative to the average wage. The first four are given equal weighting, the fifth a lower one, since not all working women have children. New Zealand scores high on all the indicators.

The index weighting is 23% each for the first four factors and 8% for child-care costs.

NZ has a far higher proportion of women than men in tertiary education which will be part of the reason NZ is ranked the best place in the world to be a working woman.

One News reported:

New Zealanders have the most freedom in the world, according to an international index that ranks 123 countries.

The report, which was released today by the Fraser Institute, Canada’s leading public policy think-tank, and Germany’s Liberales Institut, examines the characteristics of freedom and how it can best be measured and compared between different nations.

New Zealand was ranked number one for offering the highest level of freedom worldwide, followed by the Netherlands then Hong Kong.

Australia, Canada and Ireland tied for fourth spot, with the United States and Denmark tied for seventh.

The lowest-ranked countries were Zimbabwe, Myanmar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Syria.

I’m surprised Sri Lanka is so low. The full report is here. They assign a score out of 10 for personal freedom and economic freedom. We get 9.2 and 8.2 respectively. On each individual factor we are ranked 2nd or 3rd, but overall 1st with 8.7. The Netherlands and Uruguay are ranked slightly higher for personal freedoms but significantly lower for economic freedoms. The only country higher for economic freedom is Hong Kong but obviously they are not so good on personal freedoms.

The median personal freedom is 7.5, economic freedom 6.9 and overall index 7.1.

The correlation between the economic freedom ratings and personal freedom ratings was 0.60. That there would be at least that level of correlation was not a surprise given theory and cruder but indicative previous attempts to discover such a relationship.

This is one of the reasons I support both. Generally countries with greater personal freedoms have greater economic freedom and vice-versa.

The factors involved in the freedom ratings and NZ scores out of 10 are:

• Extrajudicial Killing 10
• Torture 10
• Political Imprisonment 10
• Disappearance 10
• Battle-related Deaths 10
• Level of organized conflict 10
• Female Genital Mutilation
• Son Preference
• Homicide 9.4
• Human Trafficking 10
• Sexual Violence 0.9
• Assault 9.5
• Level of perceived criminality in society 7.5
• Theft 0
• Burglary 0
• Inheritance
• Hostility to foreigners & their private property 10
• SECURITY & SAFETY SUB-TOTAL 7.7
• Forcibly Displaced Populations 10
• Freedom of Foreign Movement 10
• Freedom of Domestic Movement 10
• Women’s Freedom of Movement
• MOVEMENT SUB-TOTAL 10
• Press Killings 10
• Freedom of Speech 10
• Laws and regulations that influence media content 9.3
• Political pressures and controls on media content 8.8
• Dress code in public
• EXPRESSION SUB-TOTAL 9.5
• Freedom of Assembly and Association 10
• Parental Authority
• Religion – Government Restrictions 9.6
• Religion – Social Hostility 9.1
• Male to Male Relationship 10
• Female to Female Relationship 10
• Age of Consent for Homosexual Couples 10
• Adoption by Homosexuals
• RELATIONSHIPS SUB-TOTAL 9.8

The authors note:

There needs to be a discussion in the main text regarding the women’s
freedom and homosexuality variables to point out that these are not
about women or homosexual activity per se, but are instead trying to
get at the extent certain groups are discriminated against under the law. Equality before the law is a key component of the classical liberal tradition. By the same token, the freedom to speak, denounce, and even privately discriminate against people is also a part of the classical liberal tradition. An expanded discussion of this nuance would be helpful. The bottom line from the classical liberal tradition is that private inequality of treatment is allowable but the government and legal system, which is based on force, must treat people equally.

Also of interest in this methodology:

This index of freedom also does not incorporate measures of democracy or “political freedom.” The reason is that democracy describes a “power relationship,” to use Fred McMahon’s term, in which freedom may increase or decrease depending on the collective decisions of the elected government. Democracy may be more consistent than other forms of government at safeguarding freedom, but it is not freedom, nor does it necessarily guarantee freedom.4 The relationship between democracy and freedom is of crucial interest to all advocates of liberty, which is all the more reason to establish an independent measure of freedom.

A key point. Just being in a democracy does not make you free. It is about far more than whether once every few years you get a vote.

An author at Crooks and Liars lauds NZ over the US, and cites our placement on a number of rankings. His or her post has been shared over 10,000 times on social media!

The IEA’s Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study has some interesting results.

Maths

Singapore, Korea and Hong Kong are tops, all over 600. The midpoint is 500 and NZ is 486. Bottom is Yemen on 248.

Science

Korea, Singapore, and Finland are tops, all over 570. The midpoint is 500 and NZ is 497. Bottom is Yemen on 209.

Reading

Hong Kong, Russia and Finland are tops, all over 568. The midpoint is 500 and NZ is 531. Bottom is Morocco on 310.

The graphs are worth looking at, because they show the distribution for each country also. You can also see the results for 2001 and 2006 as well as 2011.

Michael Daly at Stuff reports:

New Zealand’s reputation for clean government continues to sparkle, as the country again comes out best in Transparency International’s global corruption perceptions index.

It is the seventh year in a row that New Zealand, either on its own or tied with Nordic countries or Singapore, has topped the index for having the lowest perceived levels of public sector corruption.

In the 2012 report, released today, New Zealand is first-equal with Denmark and Finland.

The winners were helped by strong access to information systems and rules governing the behaviour of people in public positions, Transparency International said.

This year’s index used an updated methodology that provided greater clarity on how it was constructed, making it easier to trace how data was rescaled for inclusion.

For the future, local chapter Transparency International New Zealand (TINZ) recently launched a so-called national integrity system assessment to provide a more nuanced and detailed report on the country’s vulnerability to corruption.

The assessment would provide the most detailed information yet about factors that caused New Zealand to consistently rank at the top, TINZ chairwoman Suzanne Snively said.

It would measure how well various state and non-state institutions contributed to preventing or mitigating corrupt activities, looking at institutions such as the media, parliament, political parties, the judiciary, the public service, and the private sector.

“The results will show where the integrity of New Zealand society and government is strongest and weakest,” Snively said. 

We had the odd corrupt official, but as far as I know we have never had institutional corruption where there is a wide-spread cover up. Basically we have a very healthy culture.

Denmark, Finland and Sweden all got 90 out of 100. At the bottom on 8 was Somalia, North Korea and Afghanistan.

An interesting index called the Legatum Prosperity Index places NZ as 5th out of 142 countries. The breakdown by sub-factor is:

• Economy 27th
• Entrepreneurship 13th
• Governance 2nd
• Education 1st
• Health 20th
• Safety 13th
• Personal Freedom 2nd
• Social Capital 4th

So 5th overall is good. Norway is top and Finland 7th.

Philip Booth blogs at the IEA:

The UNDP held a forum this week entitled: ‘Beyond GDP: Measuring the Future We Want’. What they actually mean, of course, is ‘measuring the future the UN wants’. The best way to ensure that we get the future we (the people) want is to have a free market, governed under the rule of law, with good protection for property rights (including, where appropriate, property rights for environmental goods). The seven billion people in the world all want a rather different future from each other. We can only achieve those different aspirations if we are free.

That is not to say that an argument cannot be made for the subsidisation of, for example, education and health care for the poor and for other forms of assistance through government. However, the success of the human race as a whole cannot and should not be measured by some kind of unified aggregate index.

Specifically, Helen Clark has proposed that the UN develop an index that combines: ‘Equity, dignity, happiness, sustainability’ arguing that ‘these are all fundamental to our lives but absent in the GDP.’ Just because something is fundamental to our lives does not mean that we need to measure it and combine it with other variables into a single index measure. Relationships are fundamental to our lives, but do we need to measure the success of the relationships of seven billion people and combine that measure with other data into some kind of aggregate index? Indeed, it is interesting that the best conditions for GDP growth in the history of the UK were created before we even started measuring GDP.

It is just about possible, nevertheless, to make a coherent case for measuring GDP. GDP does, at least, make a reasonably rigorous allowance for trade-offs that different people make in their everyday lives. If I give up £1 worth of apples to buy £1 worth of oranges and Mark Littlewood does the opposite, it can (within certain bounds of reasonableness) be said that we both have £1 of utility from the transaction. Austrian arguments can certainly be made regarding the undesirability of aggregating data and the fact that all transactions involve consumer surplus, but there is some reasonableness and consistency there.

We can also look at other statistics such as working hours, travel time, leisure time, carbon footprint (if it is thought necessary), and so on, to obtain a more comprehensive picture if we wish. However, once we try to produce an aggregate index of everything that is important, the index will lose all meaning. How can we trade off a small increase in reported happiness for somebody in Zambia for an extra £500 a year of national income per head in New Zealand? How can we trade off a tiny change in the Gini coefficient in Rwanda with a small change in the stability of marriages in India, and so on? These things have completely different values to different people.

Even trying to track one of these datasets is problematic. As the IEA’s monographs on happiness economics showed, well-being measures are suspect. There is no clear indication of a relationship between reported well-being and almost any other reasonable indicator of social progress.

Overall, we have the biggest folly imaginable: the body that some would desire to be a world government attempting to measure in a single index number everything that matters to everybody.

GDP does record economic activity only, and that is not everything – absolutely. But trying to come up with one master index will never work, because as the IEA states, we all value different things.

The Herald reports:

 New Zealand has trumped Australia as a happier country in a survey ranking the well-being of nations.

The New Economics Foundation’s Happy Planet Index rated New Zealand as the world’s 28th-happiest country – well above Australia’s ranking of 76.

Yay, NZ is above Australia on an index. Does that mean we can relax, and not worry about their greater economic wealth? Nope. Luke Malpass at the NZ Initiative looks closer at the index:

This week, the New Economic Foundation (NEF) released its third Happy Planet Index (HPI). New Zealand scored 51.6 and is ranked 28th out of 151 countries.

The HPI is one of several trendy ranking reports that have sprung up over the past decade. It does not rely on per capita GDP growth alone as a proxy measure of a nation’s well-being.

Such reports argue that in the post-materialist world in which we live, it is important to measure things other than material prosperity through the useful but blunt measure of GDP growth. That sounds sensible and laudable but only until you see how it is calculated – and who performs well.

This particular survey uses the following formula:
HPI = experience well-being x life expectancy ÷ ecological footprint

The ‘life expectancy’ part of the equation is taken from the UNDP Human Development Report and is based on hard data. The ‘experienced life well-being’ bit is based on asking people how they feel about life, and the ‘ecological footprint’ is some consumption measure cooked up by the World Wildlife Foundation (WWF).

The NEF claims: “The HPI is a clear and meaningful barometer of how well a nation is doing. This is its key value.” It sounds very nice, but who ranks where?

New Zealand is ranked 28th, Jordan is one place ahead of us, and Norway one place behind. Ranked above us are nations such as Algeria, the Philippines and Cuba. Bangladesh ranks 10th, and Vietnam 2nd. Pakistan – a nation where civil society has all but broken down – makes the top 20. Australia is 76th, below peaceful and prosperous paradises such as Myanmar, Tunisia, Uzbekistan and Yemen.

Algeria is a nice place to live, if you are a man. Men become adults at age 18. Women do not get any adult rights until they are married to a man. Cuba, Bangladesh and Pakistan all sound very happy places to live also.

And it is not just NZ that has beaten Australia – so has Myanmar – that impoverished dictatorship.

Obviously the question one might ask is: Would anyone really want to live in a poor dump ruled by human rights abusing dictators rather than a peaceful, wealthy democracy? Probably not. The HPI acknowledges that as extreme human rights abuses tend to affect minorities, the index methodology might understate them.

A yearning for competing indices to GDP growth arises out of good intentions – GDP is a narrow measure. However, at least it measures something measurable.

By contrast, most competing happiness indexes, including the HPI, tell us precisely nothing, including where we might like to live.

Like Luke, whenever I see a report I don’t just report it. I always look at their methodology and check out what exactly they are basing their rankings on.

As it is Budget Day, it is worth celebrating one thing – the quality and openness of the Budget information. This year there is even a smartphone app for the Budget.

The International Budget Partnership collaborates with civil society around the world to analyze and influence public budgets in order to reduce poverty and improve the quality of governance.

They have a league table of how open budgets are and the top ten are:

1. South Africa 92
2. New Zealand 90
3. UK 87
4. France 87
5. Norway 83
6. Sweden 83
7. US 82
8. Chile 72
9. Brazil 71
10. South Korea 71

The bottom five are Chad, Iraq, Equatorial Guinea, Fiji and Sao Tome E Principe all on zero.

Idiot/Savant at No Right Turn blogs:

Save the Children has released its annual State of the World’s Mothers report [PDF], showing that New Zealand is the 4th best country in the world to be a mother. This is an improvement from last year, when we ranked 6th. Its a legacy of the Clark government, and its policies around paid parental leave and early childhood education that we do so well on these sorts of indices. But as the Scandinavian countries above us show, we can do better; sadly, the present government just doesn’t seem to regard it as a priority.

So we improve in 2011 over 2010, and this is nothing to do with the present Government, and all to do with the Government that got chucked out in 2008. Sure.

As it happens, if you actually read about the report, most of the factors have little to do with Government. They are:

• Lifetime risk of maternal death (NZ is 32nd)
• % of women using modern contraception (NZ 9th)
• Female life expectancy at birth (NZ 10th)
• Expected years of formal female schooling (NZ 1st)
• Maternity leave length (NZ 38th)
• Maternity leave wages (NZ 1st)
• Ratio of female to male earnings (NZ 8th)
• Participation of women in govt (NZ 9th)
• Under 5 mortality rate (NZ 23rd)
• Pre-primary enrolment ratio (NZ 18th)
• Secondary enrolment ratio (NZ 3rd)

It seems why we are 4th overall is because we are not very low down in any factor.

The worst place to be a mother incidentally is the Niger. Among more developed countries is it Alaania.

The Economist Intelligence Unit has published its fourth survey of the state of democracy in the world, as at December 2011.They have five groups of criteria:

1. electoral process and pluralism
2. civil liberties
3. functioning of government
4. political participation
5. political culture

Countries are then ranked into one of four groups:

1. full democracies – 25 countries (11% of world pop)
2. flawed democracies – 53 countries (37% of world pop)
3. hybrid regimes – 37 countries (13% of world pop)
4. authoritarian regimes – 52 countries (38% of world pop)

The top 10 countries are:

1. Norway 9.80
2. Iceland 9.65
3. Denmark 9.52
4. Sweden 9.50
5. New Zealand 9.26
6. Australia 9.22
7. Switzerland 9.09
8. Canada 9.08
9. Finland 9.06
10. Netherlands 8.99

The bottom countries are:

1. North Korea 1.08
2. Chad 1.62
3. Turkmenistan 1.72
4. Uzbekistan 1.74
5. Myanmar 1.77
6. Equatorial Guinea 1.77
7. Saudi Arabia 1.77
8. Central African Republic 1.82
9. Iran 1.98
10. Syria 1.99

NZ’s score and ranking is the same as in 2010.

The 2011 Global Peace Index was released yesterday. New Zealand has been dubbed the most peaceful country for the last couple of years, but this year in 2nd place behind Iceland. On the plus side our economy didn’t disintegrate like their one did, so I’m still pretty happy here. The top ten countries are:

1. Iceland
2. NZ
3. Japan
4. Denmark
5. Czech Republic
6. Austria
7. Finland
8. Canada
9. Norway
10. Slovenia

That’s a pretty good ratng for Slovenia considering their history of formerly being in Yugoslavia.

The bottom 10 are:

1. Somalia
2. Iraq
3. Sudan
4. Afghanistan
5. North Korea
6. Congo
7. Russia
8. Pakistan
9. Israel
10. Central African Republic

They Index says NZ slipped into 2nd place due to a rise in the number of police officers (they call them internal security officers) and prison population.  Some would argue that makes us more peaceful! Interesting it seems we have also had an increase in the number of external conflicts – maybe they mean the SAS back to Afghanistan.

The biggest mover was Libya who dropped 83 places to No 143. No surprise there.

The Herald reports:

New Zealand is among the top three countries in the world for its humanitarian response to international crises, according to an aid watchdog’s report.

That’s nice, but as normal I want to know why, so lets go to the full report:

The HRI is not an index on the volume or quantity of funding provided by Western governments for humanitarian assistance. Instead, it looks beyond funding to assess critical issues around the quality and effectiveness of aid in five pillars of donor practice:

And they are:

1. Are donor responses based on needs of the affected populations, and not subordinated to political, strategic or other interests? 30% weighting
2. Do donors support strengthening local capacity, prevention of future crises and long-term recovery? 20% weighting
3. Do donor policies and practices effectively support the work of humanitarian organisations? 20% weighting
4. Do donors respect and promote International Humanitarian Law (IHL), and actively promote humanitarian access to enable protection of civilians affected by crises? 15% weighting
5. Do donors contribute to accountability and learning in humanitarian action? 15% weighting

On a weighted 0 – 10 scale, the results are:

1. Denmark 6.87
2. Ireland 6.54
3. New Zealand 6.50
4. Norway 6.42
5. Sweden 6.32
6. European Commission 6.24

Others were UK 8th 6.12, Australia 13th 5.65, US 19th 5.16

For NZ they say:

New Zealand is in 3rd place this year. Despite its small size and limited field presence as a donor, New Zealand has shown a good level of commitment to applying the GHD Principles in the way it supports humanitarian action.

It is one of the best donors in terms of timely funding, and in learning and accountability. However, it could improve in terms of supporting beneficiary participation in programming and Funding to NGOs.

NZ’s scores in each pillar are:

1. 6.49
2. 5.46
3. 6.36
4. 6.29
5. 5.72

In terms of individual indicators, the best were:

1. Funding for accountability initiatives 9.14 vs OECD average of 2.75
2. Funding and commissioning evaluations 9.90 vs 4.25
3. Un-earmarked funding 7.91 vs 3.45
4. Facilitating humanitarian access 7.78 vs 5.52
5. Funding for reconstruction and prevention 5.99 vs 4.12

The bottom two relatively were

1. Funding UN and Red Cross Red Crescent appeals 2.53 vs 5.05
2. Funding to NGOs 2.73 vs 4.40

New Zealand has again been judged to have the 5th smallest gender gap in the world, for at least the third year running. The only countries higher are Iceland, Norway, Finland and Sweden.

The UK is 15th, US 19th, Canada 20th and Australia 23rd.

Down the bottom we have Yemen, Chad, Pakistan, Mali and Côte d’Ivoire.

Labour MP Sue Moroney has said:

Today’s Global Gender Gap report, written by the World Economic Forum, shows NZ sliding towards a lower ranking says Labour Spokesperson for Women’s Affairs, Sue Moroney.

“For the first time in five years, New Zealand’s score has dropped and while it retained its fifth-placed ranking, it is now at risk of being overtaken by Ireland in next year’s report unless the Government stops going backwards on wage equality for similar work, enrolment of women in tertiary education, literacy rates for females, female to male wage ratios, and women in Ministerial positions.

“The international report shows NZ has gone backwards in five key areas for women in 2010 after having made steady progress in the previous four years,” said Sue Moroney.

Now the overall score has slightly declined, but let us look at these “five key areas” where Moroney claims NZ is going backwards. She cites one as enrolment of women in tertiary education.

Now in fact women massively outnumber men in tertiary education. In 2009 the ratio was 1.49 to 1 and in 2010 it was 1.48 to 1. So Moroney is actually complaining that men are slighlt less disadvantaged in an area where they are massively disadvantaged. Moroney has taken an idiotic stance that the higher the ratio is for women, the better for NZ. So in her world a 5:1 ration of women over men in tertiary education would be better than 4:1.

And on the issue of gender pay gap, the Herald reported:

Last week Women’s Affairs Minister Pansy Wong praised the latest New Zealand Income Survey results, saying they showed the gender pay gap was closing, down from 11.3 per cent last year to 10.6 per cent.

But Pay and Employment Equity Coalition spokeswoman Angela McLeod said at the time that the apparent drop was a result of a poor economy.

“Incomes are dropping and more households are dependent on women’s lower paid work.

“This is not a real closing of the gender pay gap, but an outcome of the recession and higher unemployment,” Ms McLeod said.

Now I actually agree with McLeod. One doesn’t celebrate a lower gender gap on the basis that both men’s and women’s wages have fallen, but men have fallen slightly more closing the gap.

But this is what many on the left effectively advocate with their insistence of reducing income inequality. They regard it as horrendous that the top 10% income earners wages by go up 5% if the bottom 10% only go up 4%. But they celebrate NZ is a more equal society if the top 10% have their wages drop 5%, so long as the bottom 10% only have their wages drop 4%.

Kiwis and Aussies have been ranked the most generous givers of time and money to charity.

The Charities Aid Foundation has published the World Giving Index. They use poll data from Gallup, and average out the percentages who say they have donated money, donated time and helped a stranger.

Overall, 20% of the world’s population had volunteered time in the month prior to interview, 30% of the world’s population had given money to charity, and 45% of the world’s population had helped a stranger. Australia and New Zealand are, jointly, the most ‘giving’ countries in the world. These countries both boast a World Giving Index score (the average of their scores on ‘giving money’, ‘giving time’, and ‘helping a stranger’) of 57%. Eight other countries from three regions also have a World Giving Index score of over 50%.

And some interesting correlations:

The link between the giving of money and happiness is stronger (a coefficient of 0.69) than the link between the giving of money and the GDP of a nation (0.58). It would be reasonable to conclude that giving is more an emotional act than a rational one.

The more generous you are, the happier you are.

The top ten countries are:

• 1= New Zealand 57%
• 1= Australia 57%
• 3= Ireland 56%
• 3= Canada 56%
• 5= Switzerland 55%
• 5= USA 55%
• 7 Netherlands 54%
• 8= UK 53%
• 8= Sri Lanka 53%
• 10 Austria 52%

The bottom eight countries are:

• 153 Madagascar 12%
• 152 Burundi 12%
• 150= Ukraine 13%
• 150= Serbia 13%
• 147= Greece 14%
• 147= Lithuania 14%
• 147= China 14%
• 146 Bangladesh 15%

The top country for giving money is Malta at 83%, followed by Netherlands at 77% and Uk and Thailand at 73%.

The top country for giving time is Turkmenistan at 61%, Sri Lanka 52% and Central African Republic 47%.

The top country for helping strangers is Sierra Leone at 75%, and Canada at 68%.

Just discovered the 2010 failed states index. NZ is in 171st place, or 7th least failed. The 10 least failed states are:

1. Norway
2. Finland
3. Sweden
4. Switzerland
5. Ireland
6. Denmark
7. New Zealand
8. Australia
9. Netherlands
10. Austria

The top 10 failed states are:

1. Somalia
2. Zimbabwe
3. Sudan
4. Chad
5. Congo
6. Iraq
7. Afghanistan
8. Central African Republic
9. Guinea
10. Pakistan

For the second year in a row, NZ has topped the Global Peace Index. I blogged the 2009 index here.

The 2010 index is here, and the top ten are:

1. New Zealand (1 in 2009)
2. Iceland (4)
3. Japan (7)
4. Austria (5)
5. Norway(3)
6. Ireland
7. Denmark (2)
8. Luxembourg
9. Finland (9)
10. Sweden (6)

The bottom ten are:

1. Iraq (1)
2. Somalia (3)
3. Afghanistan (2)
4. Sudan (5)
5. Pakistan (8)
6. Israel (4)
7. Russia (9)
8. Georgia
9. Chad (7)
10. Congo (6)

The detailed scores on the 33 seperate factors, for NZ, can be viewed here.