Some More Stuff From the American Human Development Project

The American Human Development Project has some other tools beyond their Human Development Index that help to make sense of the geography of development in the US, including maps that break their data down by congressional district (pdf). Here's a map of overall human development by CD:



And here's their map for life expectancy:



There are also maps for income and education level. And, too, they have something called a Common Good Forecaster, which lets you set up conditional scenarios for counties around the country to see how changes in educational attainment would affect things like like expectancy, median income, and community involvement. For instance, if everyone in Cook County Illinois, where Chicago is located, got a high school degree, the average income would rise from $36,171 to $37,364, and the murder rate would drop from 12.5 per 100,000 to 11.3.

And then there is the well-o-meter. In the past I've expressed doubt about the idea that you could measure "human development" at the level of the individual, as the concept of development would seem to be the sort of thing that pertains to a community or society as a whole. But the AHDP more or less lets you calculate just such a measure ("your own human development level"). Answer a series of questions, like "Have all four of your grandparents lived past the age of 80?" and "Are you happy?"; then they spit out a number. I got a 5.69 - slightly below Maryland and well below Asian males, but slightly better than the Midwest.



Now if only I could raise taxes to fund my health care and education, I could really get my human development on...