Edit: I tried looking at the study and the factors and numbers they used. I find it very unconvincing. The numbers are very abstract and the weighting rather ar

Edit: I tried looking at the study and the factors and numbers they used. I find it very unconvincing. The numbers are very abstract and the weighting rather arbitrary. You'd have to correlate these numbers by sampling actual people in each country at the bottom and top half and see how they live. When you conclude that the bottom 10% of Americans all living on food-stamps are about as well off as the top 10% Italians then something seems very wrong with the methodology. It is actually very hard to come by studies and comparisons of these things, but one knows certain facts, which is that health care is not easily accessible to the poor in the US, while it generally is in other western nations. We also know that college costs considerably in the US if you are not especially talented and get a scholarship. Germany which is supposed to much worse than the US according to this study offers cheap health care and college to all citizens. So I am not saying this study IS wrong. I have no proof of that. It simply isn't believable to me unless somebody can offer a proper explanation for the way in which say poor swiss or germans are worse off than the poor americans. This would not be the first time I've come across dubious studies like this. There have been studies in the past where they claimed Mississippi was better off than Sweden. If you start looking into this assertion and talk to people who have been both places it becomes clear that the assertion is completely ridiculous. It is one of the many cases in which statistics can serve you a fat lie.