While reading up on Operation: World, I chanced upon something out of curiosity: According to the 2009 HDI report, Singapore falls under the very highly developed tier at 23rd position, I think we ought to give ourselves a pat on the back. And then, I was even more pleasantly surprised to find out that come 2014, Singapore jumped to a whooping 9th in the world out of 187 registered countries! Even beating countries such as Denmark, Sweden and the UK to that position, following a position of 12th in 2013. Even more improvement and surely a greater round of applause for our countrys leaders. Then I found something else.. A separate index made after taking into consideration inequality.. I looked through all the 3 yearly reports (2011, 2012, 2013) after its first introduction, smiling a little wryly to myself expecting Singapore to drop a few places after we take into account our apparently non-existent homeless and poor. Then I realised something. Shocked, I thought my eyes were deceiving me - Singapore was not on any of the 3 reports! I looked through the list thrice and then grudgingly deigned to using the Ctrl+F function. But Singapore was not on any of the 3 reports! My eyes didnt fool me! Well now, my apologies if Ive arrived late to the scene and this is already a well-known, well-documented piece of controversy (or not), but why arent we there? Would we have fallen to such a shameful depth if indeed we took our countrys inequality into account that perhaps our government withdrew its official figures or disallowed data to be released or researched? I hope Im making a fool of myself over something long solved, and with a benign reason, but could someone enlighten me? Singapores current HDI rank (a good 9th of 187): hdr.undp.org/en The report where Singapore is missing: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_inequality-adjusted_HDI
Posted on: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 07:50:29 +0000
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