04 Jun Prosper and live long

Advocates of the Genuine Progress Index argue that traditional measures of our economic health, mainly the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), mislead us by mixing up good spending (on the likes of lobster, turnips, and bicycles) with bad (on oil spills, crime, and car crashes), and because it fails to account for depletion of natural resources. Those critiques, while valid and important, don’t completely obviate the relevance of GDP. A new chart from Gapminder (previously mentioned in one of my all-time favorite Contrarian posts), shows that higher GDP per person equals longer life:

The trend is unmistakable, and at first glance, the few outliers (South Africa, Russia, to a lesser extent, the USA) are countries with wide income disparity. Download larger versions here [pdf or ppt].

Hat tip: Cliff Kuang at Fast Company.