The American Human Development Project has put together a fascinating report, “The Measure of America: American Human Development Report 2008-2009,” which uses United Nations human-development rankings to evaluate the state of the nation, highlighting health, access to knowledge and standard of living.
As the report explains, this is the first time this has been done for “an industrialized nation.” The results show a wide gulf in development scores between different regions and races. As the map shows, the South comes out the worst (and the deepest blue states come out the best). Meanwhile, African Americans have nearly half the living index of white citizens.
