News

Canada is ranked sixth in the world in terms of achievements in incomes, health and education, the United Nations’s annual human development index shows.

The latest report, to be released Wednesday, shows Canada’s overall position hasn’t changed from last year and has climbed three notches since 2006.

Norway is top of the 2011 list, followed by Australia, the Netherlands, the United States and New Zealand.

The index crunches numbers on schooling, life expectancy, and per capita income to rank countries in terms of human development. The annual study has changed its methodology, meaning rankings shouldn’t be compared to prior years. It’s worth noting, however, that Canada sat in first place in the overall ranking eight times in the 1990s.

It finds that income distribution has worsened in most of the world. Latin America is still the most unequal region in income terms, though some countries such as Brazil and Chile are narrowing internal income gaps.

In overall human development terms, which include life expectancy and schooling, Latin America is more equitable than sub-Saharan Africa or South Asia, the report said. The 10 countries that place last in the 2011 overall ranking are all in sub-Saharan Africa.

This year’s report, launched in Copenhagen today, also examines how environmental degradation and social disparities are affecting countries.

Although living standards in most countries have been rising for several decades, it projects a “disturbing reversal of those trends if environmental deterioration and social inequalities continue to intensify.”