We tend to think of Britain and the United States (and Canada, by extension) as rich societies. That's true in many respects, but that wealth isn't evenly distributed. This means that other countries, with lower standards of living by standard economic measures, may be better places for people at the low end of the economic spectrum. In other words, you're much better off being poor in a country like Norway than you are in the United States or Britain.
This is described in more detail in this Financial Times article.
Starting at the top of the ladder, Britons enjoy very high living standards by virtually any benchmark. Last year the top-earning 3 per cent of UK households each took home about £84,000 after tax, equivalent to $125,000 after adjusting for price differences between countries. This puts Britain’s highest earners narrowly behind the wealthiest Germans and Norwegians and comfortably among the global elite.
So what happens when we move down the rungs? For Norway, it’s a consistently rosy picture. The top 10 per cent rank second for living standards among the top deciles in all countries; the median Norwegian household ranks second among all national averages, and all the way down at the other end, Norway’s poorest 5 per cent are the most prosperous bottom 5 per cent in the world. Norway is a good place to live, whether you are rich or poor.
Britain is a different story. While the top earners rank fifth, the average household ranks 12th and the poorest 5 per cent rank 15th. Far from simply losing touch with their western European peers, last year the lowest-earning bracket of British households had a standard of living that was 20 per cent weaker than their counterparts in Slovenia.
I don't have equivalent statistics for Canada, but I'd assume that we are somewhat better than the US, mainly due to our (stressed) universal health care. But we have a long way to go to address some of the clear inequalities in our country.
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