User:Glass House 00/Functional states index

= Summary =

The Functional States Index is an measurement of how "functional" a country is, with functional being defined as a combination of factors, including standard of living, life expectancy, education, how democratic, peaceful and egalitarian a country is, per capita ecological footprint, life satisfaction, and government debt/foreign assets. It was created in May 2009 by Eldon Katz, to be a possible compromise between other indexes for measuring a country's functionality, such as the Human Development Index or the Happy Planet Index, which only take a portion of relevant factors into account. The creator of the Functional States Index does not claim that it is perfect by any means, and says that it was merely created in hopes of inspiring a more "legitimate" organization to create an index of this type which leaves out no relevant factors.

= Methodology =

The Functional States Index is a conglomeration of the following: The Human Development Index, The Happy Planet Index ,The Global Peace Index , The Democracy Index , Income Inequality based on the Gini Coefficient , and IMF account balance as a percentage of GDP. A sub-score for each one of these was found with the following formula, where x is the score for the country from the original source, and max (x) and min (x) are the most positive/negative scores any country had from that source: For example, the Human Development Index score for Egypt was 0.734. The high and low scores on the Human Development Index were 0.968 (Iceland) and 0.284 (Somalia), so Egypt's sub-score regarding this source would be $$100 \times \frac{0.734 - 0.284}{0.968-0.284}$$=$$65.7895$$ To give one more example, the Global Peace Index score for Israel was 3.052. The high and low scores on the Global Peace Index were 1.176 (Iceland) and 3.514 (Iraq) (note that the high score here is actually the smaller number), so Israel's sub-score regarding this source would be $$100 \times \frac{3.052 - 3.514}{1.176-3.514}$$=$$19.65665$$
 * $$sub-score$$= $$100 \times \frac{x - \min\left(x\right)}{\max\left(x\right)-\min\left(x\right)}$$

Each state's Functional States Index score is the average of all six subscores, with the Happy Planet Index receiving double the weight of the other sub-scores, as a country's ecological footprint is likely to have a greater effect on it's long term sustainability than other factors.

= Ratings =

Every United Nations member state with a population of 300,000 or more was rated, plus Hong Kong and Taiwan. Each one is given a grade from A to F, based on their score. An "A" grade means mostly functional, a "B" grade means satisfactorily functional, a "C" grade means unsatisfactory/somewhat non-functional, a "D" grade means highly non-functional, and an "F" grade means completely un-functional.