Nunavut ranks with the poorest nations, Human Development Index shows

Want to see how Nunavut stacks up against Canada’s other territories and provinces and when compared to 188 other nations? A new report from the Centre for the Study of Living Standards can fill you in.

If Nunavut were a country, the territory would rank 46th in the world for the overall quality of its social and economic well-being, a report released July 28 found.

That’s down from Nunavut’s global ranking of 38 in the last report from 2012.

The newly-updated and downgraded rank of 46 places Nunavut roughly five times lower than Canada, ninth among the 188 nation states, which are ranked globally by the Human Development Index.

The report from an Ottawa-based group called the Centre for the Study of Living Standards takes the Human Development Index [HDI], a well-known tool used since 1990 to measure the well-being of nations, and uses it to measure the well-being of each Canadian province and territory from 2000 to 2014.

The HDI gives each jurisdiction a combined score based on three key areas: life expectancy, education and income.

The report, which uncovered “substantial variation among the different regions,” states Canadians living in Alberta enjoy a quality of life similar to that of Switzerland or Denmark, while Canadians in Nunavut face a quality of life similar to Latvia or Croatia.

Looking more closely at its rankings, Nunavut resembles nations that are considered to be poor, non-industrialized or developing.

The 2016 living standards report reveals:

• Alberta ranked first among Canada’s provinces and territories in 2014 and Nunavut last;

• for life expectancy in Canada, British Columbia was the top jurisdiction and Nunavut “again ranked last” with its life expectancy of 72.7 — a life expectancy that puts Nunavut at 103 in the global ranking, between the isolated Pacific island nations of Palau and Vanuatu;

• for average educational attainment in Canada, Yukon ranked first while Nunavut ranked last, coming in at 35 globally, between Croatia and the Bahamas; and,

• for expected years of schooling in Canada, Quebec ranked at the top and Nunavut came in last — ranking 101 globally (down from a rank of 89 in 2012,) between the Pacific island of Tonga and the Caribbean’s Dominican Republic.

In gross national income per capita — a measure of purchasing power — Nunavut did rank above some other Canadian provinces.

You can consult the full report here.