Comment by quantumgarbage

Comment by quantumgarbage 12 hours ago

Switzerland and Afghanistan have an almost equal Gini coefficient.

My point is: the Gini coefficient might indicate what your country's income distribution looks like, it however does not tell anything about actual life conditions.

jll29 9 hours ago

Quality of life encompasses many factors, e.g.

  Switzerland has 98 days of maternity leave, 
  Afghanistan has 90(+15) days of maternity leave
  (Wikipedia even puts it at #1 worldwide with two years,
  but that may be incorrect?).

  In Switzerland, women have been able to vote since 1971.
  In Afghanistan, women have been able to vote since 1919
  (but interrupted during the *previous* Taliban regime).

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decimalenough 10 hours ago

The Human Development Index, on the other hand, does. Switzerland is #1 at 0.967, improving at 0.25% per year. Afghanistan is #182 at 0.462 and dropping, the UK is a respectable #15 at 0.940 (between Finland and New Zealand) and also improving.

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

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jolux 12 hours ago

Sure but that’s a bit silly. Switzerland’s GDP is something like 50x that of Afghanistan. UK GDP in 2025 is much higher than in 2003, too. Of course not 5000%

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quantumgarbage 11 hours ago

Again, gini coefficients or GDP growth measures are, at best, proxies to understand the conditions the bottom decile of your country lives in.
Looking at housing costs, life expectancy, food insecurity or poverty rates do a much better job at capturing this.

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- graemep 11 hours ago
  
  Yes, and and increases in the price of essentials (food, housing, utilities) have a greater effect on livings standards of the worse off and are not captured in the numbers.
  
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