As Canada slides down the quality-of-life indexes and many once-poor countries climb up them, Canadians may find themselves having to readjust their image of their country.
Canada, once the global icon for quality of living, is now on par in some respects with Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Croatia, and other former communist countries of Eastern Europe. Meanwhile, it’s lagging behind countries such as Kuwait in terms of happiness, Thailand in terms of safety, and Slovenia in terms of health care. The good news remains, though, that the country still has a lot of potential.
The shift has been a long time in the making. While a
Fraser Institute study released May 16 found that standards of living have been dropping steadily in Canada since 2019, the United Nations
Human Development Index (HDI) suggests the decline has been going on for decades.
Any Canadian who read the newspapers in the 1990s will remember the yearly reports about the HDI, which describes itself as a “measure of average achievement in key dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, being knowledgeable and having a decent standard of living.”
The country topped the list for much of the 1990s—the undisputed best place in the world. Many older Canadians have not updated their image of their country since.
Although Canadians are still richer, healthier, and happier than most people in the world, the country never again attained the 1990s heights in the HDI. In fact, it didn’t even attain those heights in the 1990s—after a change in the methodology, the HDI was rewritten to show, retroactively, that Canada only placed a maximum of second in the 1990s.
Canada had
fallen to seventh place by the year 2000, then to 12th by 2010, 15th by 2020, and to 18th
in 2022, the latest year for which rankings are available. It’s now no longer so far ahead of Slovenia, Estonia, and the Czech Republic, as the end of communism in the late 1980s and help from the European Union pushed much of Eastern Europe up the indexes.
Many of the other indexes that appeared over the decades confirm the trend.
Numbeo, a crowd-sourced global database of quality-of-life information, for example, shows Canada declining to 33rd spot this year from seventh place when its records began in 2012. It now ranks below the most prosperous Eastern European countries such as Estonia, Latvia, Croatia, and Lithuania, and far behind the United States, which placed 15th.
In those 12 years of Numbeo records, Canada dropped to 30th spot in health care in 2024 from 21st in 2012, and to 34th from 7th in having the lowest property-price-to-income ratio. It is also behind Eastern Europe’s Czech Republic in terms of health care and behind Romania, Hungary, Serbia, and other nations of the region in terms of safety.
Canadians can also find little to smile about in the
World Happiness Index, which measures factors such as social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity, and corruption. When the index was created in
2012, Canada placed a cheery
fifth. The
2024 report, though, which shows country rankings for 2021
–23, rates Canada 15th, making it sadder, or at least less happy, than nations such as Kuwait and Costa Rica.
Then there’s the
Global Social Progress Index, which measures inclusion, political rights, safety, education, and other metrics. With all the shouting, placard-waving, and statue-toppling for social justice, surely Canada must be doing well there.
Nope. Overall, Canada has fallen from 10th place in 2011, when the index was first compiled, to 15th currently. This is despite Canada ranking fourth in the “acceptance of gays and lesbians” category—an area the federal government has made a main focus—and ranking second in the category of the proportion of women with advanced education.
How about the city-focused
Global Liveability Index run by the Economist Intelligence Unit, a measure often cited by expatriates? In the latest edition, published last year, Canada still has three cities in the world’s top 10, with Vancouver fifth, Calgary seventh, and Toronto ninth. Ah, but in the
2015 report, Vancouver ranked third, Calgary tied for fifth, and Toronto ranked fourth.
Maybe Canadians really can take heart, though, from the actual state of the country. Canada holds vast potential as one of the most resource-rich nations in the world, and
has the most educated workforce in the G7. It may have fallen over the past three decades, but it still ranks relatively high in general in various global indexes.
Whether Canada can make the same claim in another three decades remains to be seen.
