Politics and Society | mbl | Thu 9 Apr 2015 | 16.12 GMT

Iceland 4th in Social Progress Index

Iceland scores a perfect 100% as regards water and sanitation. Photo: AFP

Charles Gittins

Iceland has come fourth out of 161 countries in the 2015 Social Progress Index. The table is topped by Norway, followed by Sweden, Switzerland, Iceland and New Zealand.

Methodology

Each country looked at in the study has been assessed on three basic overall criteria: Basic Human Needs, Foundations of Wellbeing, and Opportunity. Each of these criteria contain a wealth of sub-criteria, each focusing on one particular aspect of social progress.

Iceland’s strengths and weaknesses

Iceland’s overall score is 87.62%. It scores a full 100% on ‘Water and sanitation’ and 99.57% on ‘Nutrition and basic medical care’. Relative strengths in Iceland, i.e. high scores as compared to countries of similar GDP per capita, include: ‘Access to information and communications’, ‘Personal safety’, and ‘Tolerance and inclusion’.

Relative weaknesses identified for Iceland include: ‘Availability of affordable housing’, ‘Obesity rate’ and ‘Freedom of religion’. Iceland’s GDP-per-capita peers generally perform better in these aspects.

Europe dominates Top 10

Nearly all of the Top 10 are relatively small countries, with only Canada having a population greater than 25 million. Seven of the ten are European countries, including all five Nordic countries. Four of the Top 10 are members of the European Union (EU): Denmark, Finland, Netherlands and Sweden.

Country specific information for Iceland can be found here. Below is an interactive view of the criteria used and the scores obtained by the various countries studied.