Ranking countries according to economic,social and political indicators

Despite its inadequacies, the GNP is still the best known and most widely used economic indicator to measure development. A number of authors have considered otherrelevant indicators, such as life expectancy, infant mortality, literacy and so on, as measures of development. In this paper we offer a composite index that touches more on the quality of life to measure the degree of development of the nations of the world. The criteria used here are: GNP per capita, physical quality of life, percentage of national income received by the poorest 40%, population density in agricultural areas, political rights and civil liberties, No. of telephones per capita and No. of drug-related offenses. We then used absolute measurement to obtain a composite index for each of nearly two dozen nations. The U.S.A. ranked second to Australia.