World

Maps of culture, quality of life, influence, and alliances.

Let’s begin our world tour by identifying the dominant religion in each country. Purple denotes Christianity; green, Islam; red, secularism; orange, Hinduism; yellow, Buddhism; blue, Judaism. The color is darker and saturated if the dominant religion is supported by at least 75% of the population. The color is lighter if the dominant religion is supported by 50-74% of the population. Gray countries do not have a majority following any specific belief. It is remarkable that the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand do not have a majority of Christians.

Next we examine quality of life. This is a composite metric I created using 12 variables. The dominant five are:

• the Cato Institute’s Human Freedom Index, including political and economic liberty;

• the UN’s Human Development Index (HDI), including life expectancy, educational level, and standard of living (GDP PPP per capita);

• the Corruption Perceptions Index;

• the composite credit rating according to Trading Economics;

• the Global Peace Index.

There are 7 other variables, including the rate of population change, the Global Slavery Index, and the Gini index of income inequality. I laboriously collected this data for 115 countries. Here is a heat map of the results, with yellow as the best, and blue as the worst.

No countries qualify for A+, A, or A-. Denmark alone qualifies for B+. The B countries are Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Taiwan, Iceland, Finland, Netherlands, New Zealand, and Luxembourg. Ireland, Germany, and Australia qualify for B-.

The highest quality of life on average is found in the more secular countries. This is followed by the Christian countries, and then the Buddhist countries, which remain slightly above average. The Hindu countries have a quality of life slightly below average, and the Muslim countries have the lowest quality of life.

Next we consider “influence”, which can be computed as 50% of a country’s percentage of world GDP, 25% of a country’s percentage of world population, and 25% of a country’s percentage of world area. Here are the results.

China’s influence is about 16.0%, and America’s is 13.4%. They are followed by India at 6.2%, and Russia at 5.3%. The following pie chart depicts just the top 54 countries.

There are international economic and security alliances to be aware of; they too are competing for influence. The following map and pie chart demonstrate this. Blue represents NATO, EU, and their close allies. Green represents the majority Muslim countries. Red represents SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) and BRICS (including their new members). Orange countries have applied to join BRICS. Gold countries are Muslim countries in SCO or BRICS or both.

This map and pie chart should concern us all. I hope to have a serious discussion of American foreign policy in a forthcoming post. Until next time!