The wealth of countries can be measured in many ways. The most traditional statistic is the gross domestic product figure. The short answer is that it is a valuation of everything that is produced in a given country. However, GDP is not a measure of how well off the citizens themselves are; rather, it is an indication of the strength of individual economies.
Thus, in determining well-being, the output of an economy is divided by the population. At the same time, the numbers are most often converted using the exchange rate to the dollar to make it easier to compare countries with different currencies with each other.
By this metric, the average Swiss is by far the best off, producing more than 100 thousand US dollars worth of services and goods per year. Behind by a wide margin are the residents of Singapore (90 thousand), Norway (87 thousand), the United States (86 thousand) and Iceland (83 thousand).
Slovakia is in 42nd place with more than 26 thousand dollars per capita; among our neighbours, the Austrians (57 thousand) and the Czechs (32 thousand) are ahead of us, while the Poles (25 thousand) as well as the Hungarians (23 thousand) are slightly behind.
Ukraine - as well as Ireland and Luxembourg (both among the absolute leaders in all indicators) - does not feature in the data collected by the Economist magazine. Russia is ranked 63rd with 15 thousand dollars per capita.
And what about purchasing power?
Since the GDP figures do not take account of international price differences, the shortfall is remedied by a slightly different metric for calculating GDP. This adjusts output for national price levels and gives a picture of the purchasing power of the population. That is, how many services and goods they can afford to buy with the money they earn.
Although the adjustments to the rankings for GDP at purchasing power parity are not drastic, some of the differences are too significant to be passed over with a wave of the hand.
The big jumpers are Saudi Arabia (from 29th to 18th) or the United Arab Emirates (from 20th to 12th), but also small oil states like Brunei, Guyana and Bahrain. Russia also moves up almost twenty places in the rankings (to 43rd position).
Meanwhile, a number of high-price rich countries have moved down the rankings. Switzerland fell from the top to fifth place, Iceland from fifth to eleventh and Sweden from eleventh to twentieth.
Slovakia (45th) also dropped three places, while the rest of the Visegrad Four went up. Hungarians (44th), Poles (38th) and Czechs (29th) moved up six places.
It also depends on how much the inhabitants have to cram
Although GDP per capita in purchasing power parity gives a better picture of living standards and what citizens can afford in a given country, it does not take into account the leisure time they sacrifice for work.
The Japanese, for example, have high incomes, but they work so much that there is no room for them to enjoy them and lead a quiet and comfortable life. On the other hand, there are countries which, although they have less output per capita, their inhabitants work less.
That is why it is customary to convert the GDP indicator in purchasing power parity to one hour worked per inhabitant. This is one of the important indicators of labour productivity. This indicator is then multiplied by the same annual pool of time for all countries.
After this adjustment for hours worked, countries with a strict work culture and long hours per day in particular saw large downward shifts in the rankings. In addition to Japan, this includes South Korea and other Asian countries.
In the opposite direction, Belgium (4th place) and Turkey (up twenty places to 27th place) have moved up the rankings. The Slovaks have also moved up quite significantly (to 31st position).
Alternative indicators of well-being
In addition to the aforementioned wealth indicators, there are, of course, many other indicators in use. For example, the Human Development Index, which includes a number of softer metrics such as life expectancy at birth, years of education, as well as gross national income (GNI).
In addition to the latter, the ranking of countries according to how happy their citizens feel or how they rate their quality of life, which is compiled from surveys, is also often used.
For both, it is true that wealthy countries hold the top ranks, but there are also examples of how hard statistics reflecting living standards can distort the reality of how happily citizens of some countries live - the United States falls outside the top ten for both indicators (tied for 17th and 24th, respectively).
Slovakia ranks 44th on the Human Development Index, outperformed among EU countries only by Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria.
However, Slovaks' perception of their quality of life is even worse than the hard data suggests, finishing 50th in the survey. 50th place. However, they are still more optimistic than Hungarians, Bulgarians, Greeks, Latvians, Croatians, Portuguese and Cypriots within the Union.