Human Development Report 2009 and the list of best quality of life countries

I just found references in newspapers to the Human Development Report 2009, which is an interesting document to check when you are engaged in discussions on, for instance, if humanity is actualy moving forward as a whole (as opposite to a part of humanity moving forward at the expense of the rest of the humanity, which seems often to be the case).

Anyway, there are tons of data there, and you can have a look for yourself, since the pdf is available here.

Now, in the notes of interest, I was particularly attracted by the list of countries with Very High Human Development. Please have a look at this snapshot:



I was quite shocked to see Spain over a few other major European clountries, such as Germany, Italy or the United Kingdom. The concept of human development, or quality of life, is quite a tricky concept to measure, since actual quality of life does depend on things that are impossible to measure. But still this was a positive surprise to me, and I guess also to other Spanish. In Spain we have a long tradition of underrating our own virtues, and international statistics like this help to put things in perspective and realize about both the good and bad sides of any country.