Asahi News : U.N. ranks Japan 11th in world for quality of life

Quote Originally Posted by Asahi
NEW YORK-As a place to live, Japan is becoming less desirable. For quality of life, Japan rates 11th in the world, according to an annual United Nations report.

It is the first time for Japan to slip from the top-10 rankings.

Quality of life is represented by a human development index that measures such factors as life expectancy, school enrollment ratio and per capita gross domestic product (GDP).

The report issued Wednesday was compiled by the United Nations Development Program. It covers 177 nations and territories.

Meanwhile, Japan ranks 43rd for the gender empowerment measure (GEM), an index that registers gains by women in the economic and political fields.

Japan's score is abysmal for a leading industrialized nation.

Japan topped the human development index in 1990 when the ranking was first compiled, and again in 1991 and 1993.
I find it strange that the quality of life in Japan should have decreased so much from 1990 to 2005. When I see the buildings built before 1990, and those being built now, I can see a tremendous improvement.

Women rights and working conditions have also improved. Women are less shy to denounce harassement or molestations, get married later and more have real careers. Koizumi's recent reshuffle of the LDP has included more female politicians than ever in Japanese history.

Japanese people are also travelling more, and more speak English than in the past.

In my opinion, the quality of life in Japan was just overestimated in 1990 rather than it having decreased since then.

Japan drew a low score due to the fact that Japanese rarely pursue higher education once they have secured employment.

This is in sharp contrast to other industrialized nations.
This is due to the education system that does not put much value in learning for itself, as opposed to study just to pass the exam. Japanese people on the whole do not like learning (because of their system).

The results also show that Japan has a long way to go in improving the social status of women.

The GEM charts inroads by women in corporate life as well as income differences between the sexes.

Of 80 countries compared under the GEM system, Japan was downgraded by five points from 38th place last year to 43rd this year.

But Tanzania, which ranks 164th in the list of human development index, is placed higher than Japan by being in 42nd place.
That is where we see that some "developing countries" are really developping, while Japan in comparison seem to be stagnating, even when some progress is achieved.

You can find more explanations as well as the top 30 and bottom 10 countries for 2005 on Wikipedia