International comparisons

International comparisons, or national evaluation indicators, focuses on the , , and evaluative analysis of one country in relation to others. Often, the objective is to compare one country’s performance to others in order to assess what countries have achieved, what needs to change in order for them to perform better, or a country’s progress in reaching certain objectives.

The data can be as simple as comparing countries’ population or gross domestic product (GDP), but these do not evaluate performance. For example, if we’d like to compare the United States’ economic productivity to Norway’s, we could start by comparing GDP. Norway’s GDP is nearly 500 billion U.S. dollars, while the United States’ GDP is 15,680 billion dollars. To evaluate fairly, we need to consider population. Norway’s GDP per capita is actually larger than the U.S.: $99,558 per person compared to $51,749. Such a metric is a more telling indication for international comparisons which simpler statistics fail to reveal.

Some important evaluations cannot really be quantified, but are based on qualitative measurements, such as “Which country is happiest?” Evaluative analysis, while controversial, can determine subjective well-being to some extent. The United Nations’ World Happiness Report and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development's Better Life Index have both followed in the footsteps of the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Report in their attempts to quantify "happiness." The inevitably large role of money (quantified traditionally as GDP per capita) is generally acknowledged, yet does not explain why “poorer” countries report greater happiness on occasion. Further analysis can indicate other factors boosting the quality of life of a lower income country. The science of happiness evaluation is improving, but also may use very different combinations and weights of evaluative statistics. These differences result from different indicators being used and different weighting among the indicators, based on the values and interests of an organization.

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