Bangladesh ranks 99th on social progress index

Bangladesh ranks 99th among the 132 countries on the Social Progress Index (SPI), a measure of human wellbeing that goes beyond traditional economic measures such as GDP or per capita income, according to a website report and data on http://www.socialprogressimperative.org.
Of the SAARC countries - Bangladesh ranked lower than Sri Lanka (85), while better than India (102), Nepal (101) and Pakistan (124) on the list of the SPI 2014 compiled by US-based non-profit group Social Progress Imperative.
Of the BRICS countries - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - only India ranked lower than the 100th position on the list.
China was next lowest of the five, in the 90th position, and Brazil was the highest, at 46th.
The low rankings of China and India showed that their rapid economic growth is not yet being converted into better lives for their citizens.
Central and South Asia trails all regions but Sub-Saharan Africa in terms of overall index performance.
The top performers for the region are Sri Lanka (85th), Kazakhstan (86th) and Mongolia (89th). The worst performance belongs to Pakistan, which is ranked 124th.
The SPI rates 132 countries on more than 50 indicators, including health, sanitation, shelter, personal safety, access to information, sustainability, tolerance and inclusion and access to education.
Using measures of access to basic human needs such as food and shelter and of equality of opportunity such as education and personal freedom, the index aims to measure quality of life throughout the globe.
Last year the first SPI ranked 50 countries. This year, its ranking includes 132 countries around the world.
New Zealand tops the list followed by Switzerland, Iceland and Netherlands. Chad ranks the lowest in the index.
The SPI asks questions such as whether a country can satisfy its people's basic needs and whether it has the infrastructure and capacity to allow its citizens to improve the quality of their lives and reach their full potential.
"The index shows that economic growth does not automatically lead to social progress," Michael Green, executive director of the Social Progress Imperative, a non-profit organisation that publishes the index, told Thomson Reuters Foundation.
"If we are to tackle problems such as poverty and inequality, it shows that measuring economic growth alone is not enough."