BBC has a story about the US slipping down the Human Development Index in the latest rankings. It's an interesting read, but it got more interesting for me when I unintentionally compared the HDI map with the Presidential election race 2008 map at Pollster.com.
[img_assist|nid=6|title=Human Development Index States Map|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=100|height=56]I was simply on both sites at the same time and noticed some amusing trends. As far as I can tell there's a pretty high correlation between what's called the Human Development Index (HDI, or at least that's what I'm abbreviating it to) and the phrase (coined by Tim Russert [wtf?]) Red and Blue States. Basically, states who rank higher on the HDI tend to be Bluer. Why is that interesting?[img_assist|nid=5|title=Red and Blue States|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=100|height=57] Well, you'd think people in the states where things aren't going so great wouldn't vote for the Pro-Business party, right? They'd vote for the (yes, supposedly) Pro-People party... in theory anyways. I believe that's called voting against type.
Obviously this is simplifying things quite a bit and the whole Red State, Blue State thing in itself is controversial, but the two images do lend themselves to, well, in my instance at least, a bit of a giggle.
There is actually some pretty interesting (that's a euphemistic way for me to say depressing) information on the American Human Development Project's website.
Here's the Human Development Project's definition of the Index:
"The state of the nation is often expressed through Gross National Product, daily stock market results, consumer spending levels, and national debt figures. But these numbers provide only a partial view of how people are faring.
The Human Development Index was developed as an alternative to simple money metrics. It is an easy-to-understand numerical measure made up of what most people believe are the very basic ingredients of human well-being: health, education, and income."