The Human Development Index (HDI) is a composite index that ranks countries based on four key indicators (3 dimensions):

• Life expectancy in years (health)
  

• Expected years of schooling (education)
  

• Mean years of schooling (education)
  

• Gross national income per capita (standard of living)
  

Equal weighting (1/3) is given to each of the above dimensions: (1) health, (2) education, and (3) standard of living.

And the resulting index value is a normalized number between 0 and 1, with the latter number representing the maximum possible value.

Generally speaking, a country is thought to be developed or advanced when it has an HDI greater than 0.8.

The way you calculate each dimension’s index value is by using the minimum and maximum limits set out by the United Nations.

To give you an example, for gross national income per capita (standard of living), the minimum is $100 and the maximum is $75,000. (Logic behind these numbers, here.)

Once you know the boundaries, you then use this formula for each dimension:

Dimension Index = (Actual Value - Minimum Value) / (Maximum Value - Minimum Value)

Each of the individual dimension indices are then aggregated together to create that country’s HDI.

In 2017, the country with the highest HDI was Norway at 0.953. Brazil, which is what got me started thinking about this, was at 0.759. So not quite developed.

Canada and the US were on top of each other at 0.926 and 0.924, respectively.

I spent this morning drafting the third post in my BARED blog series. First one, here. Second one, here. If any of you would like to be featured next, or know of someone who you think should be featured next, please send me an email or tweet.

At this point, I need to move onto other things today. But I did want to mention a post that Ev Williams (Blogger, Twitter, Medium…) recently penned where he talks about keeping technology in check and the drain of being always connected.

Here are two interesting excerpts:

“I’ve spent the last 20 years breathing and building the internet. So I have a good sense for the benefits of always-available instant access and all it entails. I also have a strong appreciation for the drain being constantly connected can cause on your health and sense of well-being.”

“Building companies requires a ton of work — and I love work. But I’ve also found that working 24/7 no longer produces the best work product or the best life experience (not that it ever did).”

This really resonates with me, as I am sure it does for many of you. I like being always connected. I like waking up every morning and writing a blog post. I like saying yes to things. And I, like Ev, love work. 

But it can be draining when your ambition seems to exceed your body’s ability to keep on going. And when that happens, you no longer produce your best work, which is the whole point. 

So in the end, I think we all need these little checks and balances. Exercise is number one for me. It is well worth the time it takes. What do you do for balance?

We talk a lot about economic inequality these days. We worry, among other things, that our successful cities are becoming playgrounds for the rich and that housing is becoming increasingly unaffordable for the middle class.

Without negating the importance of things such as attainable housing, I’d like to offer up two, potentially new, perspectives on economic inequality.

The first is an essay by venture capitalist Paul Graham. In it, he rationally unpacks, as he always does, the phenomenon of economic inequality. One of his key points is the distinction between rent seeking degenerate economic inequality and the economic inequality caused by rapid value creation (i.e. Two Stanford students decide to create a new search engine called Google).

“If the rich people in a society got that way by taking wealth from the poor, then you have the degenerate case of economic inequality where the cause of poverty is the same as the cause of wealth. But instances of inequality don’t have to be instances of the degenerate case. If one woodworker makes 5 chairs and another makes none, the second woodworker will have less money, but not because anyone took anything from him.”

Of course, Paul Graham is thinking about this from the perspective of a venture capitalist that funds startups and helps entrepreneurs get rich. But what about the impacts to people who live in a city where the rich are far richer than the poor?

That brings me to the second perspective.

A recent study, published in The Journal of the American Medical Association and written about in the New York Times, has discovered a surprising relationship between income and life expectancy across the United States from 2001 to 2014.

What they found was that cities with high economic inequality – such as New York and San Francisco – actually have lower inequality when it comes to life expectancy. 

Here is a chart from the New York Times:

And here is a chart from healthinequality.org:

If you’re rich, it doesn’t matter where you live. The life expectancy of a rich person in New York is roughly the same as a rich person in Detroit. (Though, as to be expected, women generally live longer than men.)

However, as income levels fall, so does life expectancy. But it falls more in a city like Detroit than it does in New York. In fact, rich cities such as New York and San Francisco are almost model cities in this regard. Why is that?

The biggest predictor appears to be health behaviors, such as smoking and obesity:

“The research seems to suggest that living in proximity to the preferences — and tax base — of wealthy neighbors may help improve well-being. New York is not just a city of rich and poor, but also one of walkable sidewalks, a trans-fat ban and one of the most aggressive anti-tobacco agendas of any place in the United States.”

So there you have it. Two, potentially new, ways to think about economic inequality.