English: The logo of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This short article, with excellent graphics from Pew Research is a must read. Pew looks at the question, ‘What makes a good life’? They argue that usually this question is in the domain of priests, philosophers and metaphysicians, but it cites the OECD who sought to find the answers with data.

Source: Measuring the ‘good’ life around the world | Pew Research Center

If you examine the article and look at the data, you will no doubt wonder why your country is better or worse than some other benchmark.

But of course, the metadata glosses over the detail. For example, the US ranks highly as a nation but this distorts the relative ‘good’ life of working class and middle class Americans, compared to the priviliged top-earners. I sense that if we looked at the data over time, then America’s middle and working classes would not relate to the ‘good’ life cited?

Thoughts?