Ireland is listed lower on quality of life index

Canada's citizens enjoy the highest quality of life in the world, having topped the UN's main index of development for a record sixth year in a row.

Ireland has dropped to 20th of the 174 states ranked in the Human Development Index, a fall of three places over last year. Norway and the US follow Canada in the rankings, with the UK in 10th position.

The index, published today by the United Nations Development Programme, assesses the quality of life in a country by taking a composite of measurements, including health, education and life expectancy, rather than relying solely on indicators of financial wealth.

At the other end of the scale, Africa shows the lowest levels of development, as war, AIDS and economic decline continue to erode the quality of life. The bottom 22 places in the index of 174 countries are occupied by African states, with war-torn Sierra Leone in last place.

Globalisation is the theme of the 1999 Human Development Report, which carries a plea to world leaders to make this phenomenon work for people and not just for profits. Globalisation, it says, is more than the flow of money and commodities - it is the growing interdependence of the world's people through "shrinking space, shrinking time and disappearing bodies".

Economic markets have been allowed to dominate the process, and the benefits and opportunities have not been shared equally. Globalisation has driven a deeper wedge between richer and poorer countries and between people within countries.

In 85 countries, people are worse off than they were a decade ago.

As the report points out, the top three billionaires have assets greater than the combined GNP of all least-developed countries and their 600 million people.

The fifth of the world's people living in the highest-income countries accounts for 86 per cent of the world's GDP, 82 per cent of world export markets, 68 per cent of foreign investment and 74 per cent of telephone lines. The bottom fifth, in the poorest countries, has about 1 per cent in each category.

Technology innovations such as the Internet can open a "fast-track" to knowledge-based growth, but at present benefit the well off and educated. "An invisible barrier has emerged that, true to its name, is like a world-wide web, embracing the connected and silently, imperceptibly, excluding the rest."

Controversially, the report suggests a "bit tax" on data sent through the Internet to rectify this imbalance.

Money also talks louder than need in defining the research agenda in an area such as biotechnology, the report says. "Cosmetic drugs and slow-ripening tomatoes come higher on the list than a vaccine against malaria or drought-resistant crops for marginal land."

The report calls for a shift of research towards the needs of the world, rather than just of those who pay. It recommends the establishment of a group of independent scientists to identify technological problems which, if solved, would contribute to human development.

Canada again tops a separate gender-related development index, which measures the economic and social position of women relative to men. Ireland ranks 20th.

The Human Development Report 1999 from the UN Development Programme is published by Oxford University Press. It can be ordered from booksellers or from OUP in the UK, price $19.95.