Not too shabby

When the moon is in the Seventh House,

And Jupiter aligns with Mars,

Then peace will guide the planets,

And love will steer the stars.

The cosmic alignment of my birth planets must be right, cause I'm drowning in good news. Yesterday, the US Democratic Party took the House and the Senate. Today, the UN Development Program issues its annual report on the Human Development Index and my two favourite countries, Canada and Viet Nam, are respectively in very good positions on the list of best countries to live in. Check it out:

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 9 (Reuters) - Norway, Iceland, Australia, Ireland and Sweden rank as the best five countries to live in but Africa's quality of life has plummeted because of AIDS, said a U.N. report released on Thursday.

The United States was ranked in eighth place, after Canada and Japan, in the report that rates not only per-capita income but also educational levels, health care and life expectancy in measuring a nation's well-being.

The Human Development Index, prepared by the U.N. Development Program, has been issued annually since 1990 and includes every country for which statistics are available. The concept of Human Development looks beyond per capita income, human resource development, and basic needs as a measure of human progress and also assesses such factors as human freedom, dignity and human agency, that is, the role of people in development. The Human Development Report 2005 argues that development is ultimately «a process of enlarging people's choices», not just raising national incomes.

Unsurprisingly, the countries at the top of the list are high income nations as people in richer countries tend to be healthier and have more educational opportunities. People in Norway, for example, are 40 times wealthier than people in Niger, which ranks 177th, the lowest ranking country on the list.

For the 31 countries with low human development, life expectancy is only 46 years -- some 32 years less than in rich nations, the report said. But some nations have a rank above their income. Viet Nam for example is poor but ranks above countries with a higher per capita income. Guatemala has almost double the average income of Viet Nam, but is lower on the HDI (117 vs. 108). Conversely Bahrain has an average income twice the level of Chile but ranks lower because it "under-performs on education and literacy," the report said.

The Report cites several human development success stories, such as Viet Nam, which has cut income poverty in half, from 60% in 1990 to 32% in 2000 and has reduced child mortality rates from 58 per 1,000 live births to 42 over the same period.

Poor but happy

For more information:

http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2005/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index