For Want of a Better Title

You know I was looking at the most recent UNDP Human Development Index, and something caught my eye. In terms of percentage of population that was made up of immigrants it was 31.8% in 1960 and 35% in 2005. I guess all those immigrants in 1960 became citizens in 1963. For those who’d like to know our rank, it’s #23 out of 187. That puts us on the Very High Human Development scale.

In terms of richest 10% to poorest 10%, I think we are 2nd highest amongst the Very High Human Development group with HK just ahead by 0.1. Then again there is missing data from certain oil rich countries like Brunei, Kuwait and UAE, so who knows. It seems countries based on the Anglo-Saxon model of capitalism in the top tier group have larger gaps between the top 10% and bottom 10%. Japan has the lowest at 4.5, but that could be due to almost 20 years of recession.