Report: Norway Highest in the Human Development Index
Lisa Schlein
Geneva
10 Jul 2001 10:16 UTC
A report released today (Tuesday) says Norway has the best quality of life of any country in the world. The report, called The Human Development Index, was commissioned by the U.N. Development Program. Each year the U.N. agency ranks 162 countries according to a number of factors, including 1)life expectancy, education, adult literacy and income per capita.
The report says Norway and second-place Australia have narrowly edged ahead of Canada, the leader for the previous six years. It notes the United States has dropped from third to sixth place.
The lead author of the report, Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, says 2)wealth alone does not necessarily 3)guarantee a good quality of life. Although the United States has a higher level of per-capita income than other countries, she says it has slipped in the rankings, because of such factors as lower life expectancy, declining levels of educational achievement and an 4)uneven distribution of wealth. Fukuda-Parr said "The United States, among 17 countries for which the human 5)poverty index is estimated for industrialized countries, actually comes last, in the sense that it has the highest level of what we call human poverty - a large number of people who are dying before the age of 40, people who are functionally 6)illiterate even though incomes are high." The report says the quality of life in the countries of the former Soviet Union continues to decline, but conditions in these countries are better than in most of Africa. The bottom 28 countries in this year's Human Development Index are all in Africa.
Sierra Leone is ranked last because of low life expectancy and 7)literacy rates. The United Nations report says a child born in Sierra Leone today will probably die before reaching the age of 39, and only 32 percent of the 8)adults in Sierra Leone can read.
But the report emphasizes that poorer nations are benefiting from new technologies, especially in the fields of information and communications. Ms. Fukuda-Parr says people in many parts of the developing world are taking advantage of these technologies to improve their lives.
Ms. Fukuda-Parr said "I think the map of the world, that sort of was a north-south divide between those that are developed and those that are not developed, is now changing. What is new ... is that centers of technological innovation are 9)cropping up in the south as well. Not just in Bangalore, but also in Sao Paolo, in South Africa, in Tunisia."
The report says, by using the new information and communications technologies, people in the developing world are now able to 10)accomplish something they were rarely able to do in the past: to overcome the 11)barriers of social, economic and 12)geographical 13)isolation.
(1) life expectancy n.平均寿命(=expectation of life)
(2) wealth[welW]n.财富, 财产, 大量
(3) guarantee[^ArEn5ti:]n.保证, 保证书, 担保vt.保证, 担保
(4) uneven[Qn5i:v(E)n]adj.不平坦的, 不平均的
(5) poverty[5pRvEtI]n.贫穷, 贫困, 贫乏, 缺少
(6) illiterate[I`lItLrEt]n.文盲adj.不识字的, 没受教育的
(7) literacy[5lItErEsI]n.有文化，有教养，有读写能力
(8) adult[5AdQlt]n.成人, 成年人adj.成人的, 成熟的
(9) crop up v.突然出现
(10) accomplish[E5kQmplIF]vt.完成, 达到, 实现
(11) barrier[5bArIE(r)]n.(阻碍通道的)障碍物, 栅栏, 屏障
(12) geographical[dVi:E5^rAfIk(E)l]adj.地理学的, 地理的
(13) isolation[aIsE5leIF(E)n]n.隔绝, 孤立, 隔离
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