The 2020 edition of the Social Progress Index issued this week shows that the United States — along with Brazil and Hungary — are the only three countries out of 163 in the world that are slipping backward. People in these three countries are worse off than they were when the index was first calculated in 2011. The declines in Brazil and Hungary are smaller. Over the last decade, the United States has declined more than any country in the world.
The research behind the Social Progress Index collects 50 metrics of well-being — nutrition, safety, freedom, health, education, and more — to measure the quality of life in each country. The United States, despite its immense wealth, military power, and cultural influence, now ranks 28th — having slipped from 19th in 2011.
The United States is number one in the world in the quality of its universities, but is 91st in access to quality basic education. The U.S. leads the world in medical technology, yet is 97th in access to quality health care — in spite of the passage of the Affordable Care Act.
A majority of countries have lower homicide rates, lower traffic fatality rates, better sanitation, and better internet access. The United States has high levels of early marriage, lags in sharing political power equally among citizens, and, not surprisingly, ranks 100th in discrimination against minorities.
These structural problems in the U.S. identified in the Social Progress Index predate President Trump, and accelerated during the Obama-Biden administration from 2011 to 2017. Donald Trump has exacerbated these social deficiencies in the U.S., but neither he nor his administration is the cause of this national decline.
The country is also suffering a pandemic of problems not highlighted in the Social Progress Index but which have worsened under Democratic and Republican administrations. Income inequality is tearing at the fabric of the country. One in five children in the U.S. suffers from hunger, and food and housing insecurity make normal life impossible for tens of millions. Rising distress and despair are largely American phenomena not observed in other advanced countries. Deaths of despair — from alcohol, drugs, and suicide — have been on the rise since 2011. The opioid crisis has worsened dramatically over that time as well. These problems are now self-replicating in the next generation because of the dysfunction in so many American homes.
The precipitous decline of American life will not be halted by a Joe Biden victory on November 3, and a return to the policies and practices of the Obama-Biden administration. It was under that administration — what Joe Biden calls “normal” — that the problems highlighted above — and a number of others — worsened and contributed to our national decline. By 2024, either a Trump-Pence administration or a Biden-Harris administration will have led us over a cliff into accelerated national decline.
