We wish you Merry Christmas and a Happy 2012, full of happiness, photographs and travels. Last year we celebrated these days with our backpacks and this year: family time!
We are in the finals for the best photolog in Spanish
Three days ago, the organization of the Bitácoras awards announced the names of the finalists and… we made it!
On November 11th, in a week, the jury will decide who takes the prize home. It will be very exciting because they are going to announce the winner during the award ceremony: “And the winner, is…” (we cross our fingers)
List of countries visited, ordered by HDI
Half way through our trip, as we entered Asia, we asked ourselves if we could quantify the differences in development amongst the countries we had visited so far. At the time, coming from Australia, the differences were obvious, but we asked ourselves: could those differences be measured objectively?
In our initial approach we used GDP as the index, but our readers pointed out that GDP is not a good indicator, and pointed us to the Human Development Index: “a standard means of measuring well-being, especially child welfare. It is used to distinguish whether the country is a developed, a developing or an under-developed country, and also to measure the impact of economic policies on quality of life.”
Sorted from higher to lower HDI:
With a very high HDI:
Australia
The Netherlands
United States of America
New Zealand
Canada
Spain
Singapore
Chile
Argentina
With high HDI:
Mexico
Panama
Malaysia
Russia
Peru
With medium HDI:
China
Thailand
Bolivia
Mongolia
Honduras
Vietnam
Guatemala
Laos
Cambodia
The Netherlands is at the second place, and Spain ranks fourth. Not bad!