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Factoids - American Human Development Project

Posted by timethief • 6/02/09 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: access-to-knowledge, american- human- development- project, domestic-issues, health, international-comparisons, standard-of-living

2009 American Human Development Project of the Social Science Research Council

About the Project
The American Human Development Project is a nonpartisan, non-profit initiative established to introduce to the United States a well-honed international approach and tool for measuring human well-being: the human development approach and the human development index. The project’s mission is to stimulate fact-based public debate about and political attention to human development issues in the United States and to empower people with an instrument to hold elected officials accountable for progress on issues we all care about: health, education and income.

Factoids -> measureofamerica.org/2008-2009-report/factoids/

Executive summary PDF file
measureofamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/ahdr-execsumm.pdf

User Comments

6/02/09

jhixon2

I don't trust anything anybody says about health. I have heard so much misconstrued info that I second guess everything at this point.

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6/02/09

satijournal

This is what gets me:

More than half of all personal bankruptcies in the U.S. are related to an inability to pay for illness or injury.

Getting sick shouldn't ruin a person's life financially. There should be socialized health insurance for catastrophic illnesses and injuries to prevent that from happening.

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1. 6/03/09
  
  timethief
  
  Access to healthcare
  IMO every citizen regardless of their financial status and no matter what part of the country they live in ought to have access to healthcare.
  
  Access to knowledge
  Fourteen percent of the population – some 30 million Americans – lacks the literacy skills to perform simple, everyday tasks like understanding newspaper articles and instruction manuals.
  
  Twelve percent of Americans lack the literacy skills to fill in a job application or payroll form, read a map or bus schedule, or understand labels on food and drugs.
  
  This makes me groan.
2. 6/03/09
  
  Agit8r
  
  @Sati... don't you realize that sickness and injury is God punishing people?!
  
  @TT... I guess we know who the people who still approve of Bush are o_0
6/03/09

Agit8r

"Infant mortality on par with Cuba"?!

I can't recall, does Cuba have socialized medicine?

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6/03/09

Agit8r

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index#2008_statistical_update

here's another list.

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6/03/09

tuanhnguyen

Well, well... "stimulate fact-based public debate about and political attention to human development issues", it will all come to money!!!

Lobbyists and interest groups will win. Not sure about education, since it's very bad for no reason. Health and low income is all about the corruption and greed from the people on the top.

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6/03/09

polybore

It is a bit out of date in that regard. According to the World Health Organisation infant mortality per 1000 live births in 1990 2000 and 2006 were.

Cuba 11 6 5
United States of America 10 7 7
Croatia 10 7 5
Estonia 12 9 5
France 7 4 4
Poland 16 8 6
Sweden 6 3 3
United Kingdom 8 6 5

So rather than being comparable the US is actually worse than the countries stated.

It is interesting that between 2000 and 2006 there was no improvement in US infant mortality. The static US position is markedly in contrast to the improvements achieved by other countries.

www.who.int/whosis/en/index.html is very handy for searching the WHO database.

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1. 6/03/09
  
  Agit8r
  
  and yet we had a "pro-life" dominated congress and President... interesting o_0
6/03/09

timethief

This page lists the organizations that funded the study measureofamerica.org/funders/

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