I don't suppose it occurred to you that if the org. was partial to the USA it would have put the USA farther up the ladder?
Anna, it did put USA at No. 3, which is very high. If they put USA at No. 1 it would be too obvious.
A survey of this kind really cannot be done by any one country, there will be accusations of favoritism, it won’t be credible. It needs an impartial organization like UN to do this type of survey. In my opinion, survey by UN is likely to be much more reliable than one carried out by an American organization (who would have a vested interest in promoting tourism to USA).
Balogna. The UN is no more impartial than you are. Your opinion doesn't mean much and neither does your 2008 report because you show NOTHING substantiating it, You have not shown yourself to be an authority on anything here.
As I said before, the one I found had the UN report with Canada as 4th in April THIS year.
"To produce this annual Index we consider, for each of these countries, nine categories: Cost of Living, Culture and Leisure, Economy, Environment, Freedom, Health, Infrastructure, Safety and Risk, and Climate. This involves a lot of number crunching from “official” sources, including government websites, the World Health Organization, and The Economist, to name but a few.
Once the data is collected, we also take into account what our editors from all over the world have to say about our findings. These correspondents and colleagues are working and living in these countries themselves and give us a more realistic view of our official findings. "
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Our sources
We used the following sources to compile the data for our 2009 Quality of Life Index:
UNESCO Statistical Yearbook; Freedom in the World: The Annual Survey of Political Rights and Civil Liberties; United States Department of Commerce; U.S. State Department; The United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention; The Freedom House Survey; Statistical
Abstract of the United States; The World Factbook; The World Almanac and Book of Facts; The World Bank Atlas; Gale Country and World Rankings Reporter; U.S. Department of State Indexes of Living Costs Abroad, Quarters Allowances, and Hardship Differentials; The World Health Organization; UN Statistical Yearbook; The Economist World in Figures. We also used popular newspapers and magazines, such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, National Geographic, Time, and The Economist.
And, of course, we consulted letters from International Living subscribers and remembered the experiences of our contributing editors around the world."
Besides, I think the UN would hardly go as far in depth as these people did because they only look at development factors. There are people living in the bush of South America that are perfectly content with being there and are happy as clams at the beach but they aren't developed.
Quality of Life Index 2009
The UN's methods and focus:
Human Development Index - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia