Beyond GDP: The Social Progress Podcast
Insight and inspiration on making the right choices for people and planet. We feature bold conversations with global leaders and innovators from government, businesses, community advocacy, foundations, and more who are charting a path for inclusive growth and sustainability. Hosted by Michael Green, CEO at Social Progress Imperative, we explore how the world must move beyond GDP metrics and economic growth to truly improve the social and environmental wellbeing of communities. ©Beyond GDP: The Social Progress Podcast is an essential listening for decision-makers ready to do things differently.
Beyond GDP: The Social Progress Podcast
The World's Healthiest Nations and Those Struggling
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Happy World Health Day! From the top-performing leaders in Asia to the surprising decline in health indicators among rich countries, we are exploring the 2026 Social Progress Index and analyzing the countries with the best health scores and those falling dangerously behind.
Success isn’t just about doctors; it’s about building a healthy society.
Topics covered in the episode:
- Top-ranked healthiest countries
- Which are the top-ranked countries in Latin America
- The U.S. and the health crisis in Russia and the post-Soviet states
- How poverty and inequality drive global health trends
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Happy World Health Day! So, which countries are celebrating their shiny Apple root health goody-goody status? And which countries are the sick men of the world and need to sort themselves out? Well, we're going to have a look using the Social Progress Index where there's a specific component on health outcomes. And it is the Asian countries that are leading the way. Singapore tops the rankings, congratulations, Singapore, followed closely by Japan and South Korea. The Nordic countries also do well, don't they always? But they're not so far ahead of countries like Spain, Italy, and France. And the Latin connection continues, as Costa Rica, Chile, and Uruguay also perform well on health outcomes. And it's also notable that the wealthy countries of the Arabian Gulf are doing pretty well here in tackling health issues, Qatar in particular. A special commendation also goes to Jordan, which, though still a lower middle-income country, scores almost as well as the United States. That's a great performance, Jordan. Now, when we look for countries that are doing a poor job in achieving health outcomes, the US does jump out at you. Despite off-the-charts levels of health spending as a percentage of GDP, the US ranks a miserable 45th in the world on health outcomes. The reasons are well known: gross inequity in access to health care, lots of poverty-related lifestyle problems, and gross wastefulness in healthcare delivery. Now, America may be bad, but in terms of simple raw health outcomes, Russia's performance for a high-income country is the most woeful. Russia ranks 95th in the world on health outcomes, which is only a little better than that of Uganda, which is a low-income country. Indeed, there seems to be a wider post-Soviet health problem as Belarus, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan all underperformed horribly on health outcomes. Now, a few years ago, President Putin might have argued in mitigation that health was on an upward trend in Russia, and indeed it was. But not anymore. As he squanders lives trying and failing to occupy Ukraine, health services are also collapsing at home. It is going to get worse for Russia. One final thought for World Health Day. When we talk about health, we often think about hospitals, doctors, vaccines, medicines and so on. Now these are all very important, but so too is a healthy society. Poverty, inequality, exclusion, and so on are all drivers of poor health. If you want good health for your society, you need to be living in a healthy society. Do like and subscribe, and if there's a topic or an event or a region you want to know more about using social progress index data, drop us a comment below and we'd love to follow up. Thanks again and bye bye.