Mexico above China is crazy lowkey, considering the differences in safety
Turkey behind Indonesia and Russia..?
Based on the criteria, this is bizarre.
Do you think it is the weed or the bikes that make netherlands the best?
I moved to the Netherlands. My kids can bike to school without dying. That’s basically my bar for a high qol and nowhere else meets that (maybe Denmark I guess)
Literally yesterday Canada was one place above Japan. Significant change in quality of life in less than 24 hrs
So we Brazilian are the best out of the broke. I guess that’s something. Am guessing the Personal freedom and access to information is what puts us ahead here.
Of the top 13 countries of the full index, 11 countries are either Nordics (Norway (1), Denmark (2), Finland (3), Sweden (4) and Iceland (6)) or successor states of the Holy Roman Empire (Switzerland (5), Luxembourg (7), Netherlands (8), Germany (10), Austria (11) and Belgium (13)).
I leave the thought exercise to the reader, what these 11 countries of those two adjacent regions have in common.
India should have like 28 points not 58
For context, this is based on several key indicators of “social progress,” with items listed here:
There’s a lot of fascinating insights on that website. It seems more rigorous than other studies about QOL that I’ve seen.
US under Spain and Italy is hilarious with no basis in reality.
Is this another one of those studies where a group of very non-typical (academics) decide what they believe is important in society (their values) and then judge countries by them.(Claiming it’s some objective QOL and not just based on their very subjective values)
Germany on global 10th place? Did you exclude eastern Germany totally and only measure the quality of West German academic childs?
Japan has one of the lowest birthrates, in part due to work pressure and working all of the time, and it’s so high on quality of life??? That doesn’t make much sense.
How is Japan so high? I keep hearing horrific stories about their work culture.
The Netherlands looks great when you look at statistics like this but the reality is completely different when close to 50% of young people are considering moving abroad since house prices are completely unaffordable.
The smallest most run down 20-25m2 apartment will set you back 200k and you will still be in a bidding war with 10 others, add on basic renovation costs and transfer tax of 10% you’ll be close to 275k before you know it. Add another 100k for the same apartment in the west of the country.
If you want to rent its the same issue, 1600€ for a small apartment is normal right now, social housing is just gambling in the hopes that you will be the lucky 1 out of 3000 others.
I really hope to have a future in this country but realistically speaking I don’t think thats possible for me and many people my generation
Great content !
However, can’t trust these rankings when china is below Brazil wtf ?
I find this indices to traditionally be a bit of a circlejerk. The definition of “good” is rarely purely metric driven, but often includes “does this country do what I think is good” regardless of the outcomes and then gives them a thumbs up for it. Even if it is entirely metric driven, how they define the weightings is almost always to create a narrative.
![[OC] Quality of life in the world's biggest economies](https://www.europesays.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/b05xar18i6jf1-1240x1024.png)
18 comments
Source: [Social Progress Index ](https://www.socialprogress.org/social-progress-index)
Tools: [Datawrapper ](https://www.datawrapper.de/)
Mexico above China is crazy lowkey, considering the differences in safety
Turkey behind Indonesia and Russia..?
Based on the criteria, this is bizarre.
Do you think it is the weed or the bikes that make netherlands the best?
I moved to the Netherlands. My kids can bike to school without dying. That’s basically my bar for a high qol and nowhere else meets that (maybe Denmark I guess)
Literally yesterday Canada was one place above Japan. Significant change in quality of life in less than 24 hrs
So we Brazilian are the best out of the broke. I guess that’s something. Am guessing the Personal freedom and access to information is what puts us ahead here.
Of the top 13 countries of the full index, 11 countries are either Nordics (Norway (1), Denmark (2), Finland (3), Sweden (4) and Iceland (6)) or successor states of the Holy Roman Empire (Switzerland (5), Luxembourg (7), Netherlands (8), Germany (10), Austria (11) and Belgium (13)).
I leave the thought exercise to the reader, what these 11 countries of those two adjacent regions have in common.
India should have like 28 points not 58
For context, this is based on several key indicators of “social progress,” with items listed here:
https://preview.redd.it/cljgm78fn6jf1.png?width=1326&format=png&auto=webp&s=86776781d582c045424936d2c1db7db13bed3513
There’s a lot of fascinating insights on that website. It seems more rigorous than other studies about QOL that I’ve seen.
US under Spain and Italy is hilarious with no basis in reality.
Is this another one of those studies where a group of very non-typical (academics) decide what they believe is important in society (their values) and then judge countries by them.(Claiming it’s some objective QOL and not just based on their very subjective values)
Germany on global 10th place? Did you exclude eastern Germany totally and only measure the quality of West German academic childs?
Japan has one of the lowest birthrates, in part due to work pressure and working all of the time, and it’s so high on quality of life??? That doesn’t make much sense.
How is Japan so high? I keep hearing horrific stories about their work culture.
The Netherlands looks great when you look at statistics like this but the reality is completely different when close to 50% of young people are considering moving abroad since house prices are completely unaffordable.
The smallest most run down 20-25m2 apartment will set you back 200k and you will still be in a bidding war with 10 others, add on basic renovation costs and transfer tax of 10% you’ll be close to 275k before you know it. Add another 100k for the same apartment in the west of the country.
If you want to rent its the same issue, 1600€ for a small apartment is normal right now, social housing is just gambling in the hopes that you will be the lucky 1 out of 3000 others.
I really hope to have a future in this country but realistically speaking I don’t think thats possible for me and many people my generation
Great content !
However, can’t trust these rankings when china is below Brazil wtf ?
I find this indices to traditionally be a bit of a circlejerk. The definition of “good” is rarely purely metric driven, but often includes “does this country do what I think is good” regardless of the outcomes and then gives them a thumbs up for it. Even if it is entirely metric driven, how they define the weightings is almost always to create a narrative.
Comments are closed.