French regions according to Human Development Index 2021 and which countries and parts of UK compare

[Tooting Carmen]

In addition to France's Overseas Territories which, unlike the UK's, are counted as being fully part of national territory, there are surprisingly some regions of mainland France even poorer/less developed than the poorest/least developed parts of the UK: Northeast England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In italics are the pre-2016 regions, in standard are the current ones.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...elopment_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...elopment_Index

(1) Ile de France 0.952 (same as Hong Kong and similar to South East England)
(2) Rhone-Alpes/Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes 0.919 (same as Israel and in between Scotland and East of England)
(3) Midi Pyrenees/Occitanie 0.914 (similar to Austria and same as East Midlands)
(4) Aquitaine/Nouvelle-Aquitaine 0.904 (similar to Spain and North East England)
France (average) 0.903 (similar to Spain)
(5) Provences-Alpes-Cote d'Azur/Alsace/Grand Est 0.902 (similar to Spain)
(7) Pays de La Loire 0.899 (similar to Cyprus and Wales)
(8) Brittany 0.898 (similar to Cyprus and same as Wales)
(9) Languedoc-Roussillon/Occitanie 0.890 (same as Estonia and poorer than Northern Ireland, the poorest part of the UK)
(10) Auvergne/Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes/Poitou-Charentes/Nouvelle-Aquitaine 0.886 (similar to Greece)
(12) Upper Normandy/Normandy/Nord-Pas-de-Calais/Hauts-de-France 0.884 (similar to Greece)
(14) Burgundy/Bourgogne-Franche-Comte 0.883 (similar to Greece)
(15) Central-Val de Loire 0.882 (similar to Greece)
(16) Franche-Comte/Bourgogne-Franche-Comte 0.879 (similar to Poland)
(17) Lorraine/Grand Est 0.878 (similar to Poland)
(18) Limousin/Nouvelle Aquitaine/Lower Normandy/Normandy 0.877 (similar to Poland)
(20) Champagne-Ardenne/Grand Est 0.875 (same as Bahrain, Lithuania and Saudi Arabia)
(21) Picardy/Hauts-de-France 0.867 (similar to Portugal)
(22) Corsica 0.863 (same as Latvia)
(23) Guadeloupe 0.853 (same as San Marino)
(24) Martinique 0.848 (same as Slovakia)
(25) Reunion 0.843 (similar to Argentina)
(26) French Guiana 0.793 (similar to Bulgaria and Grenada)
(27) Mayotte 0.781 (between Sri Lanka and Bosnia-Herzegovina)

[Tooting Carmen]

My theories as to why France's HDI is lower than the UK's (besides France's DOMTOMS bringing the average a little down):

(1) Immigrants and ethnic minorities seem to be much more uniformly poor than is the case in the UK, where by contrast Chinese and Indians now outperform Whites in terms of education and income.
(2) Many rural and small town areas of France are full of White working-class people - la France peripherique, as sociologists increasingly call them - the opposite of what occurs in most equivalent areas in the UK (except to an extent Wales, Northeast England, Lincolnshire, Cornwall and Cumbria), where many middle-class people live and are often commuters to the nearby cities.

[gixajo]

France (average) 0.903 (similar to Spain)

You are very lucky that there are few French people in the forum, daring to even remotely compare Spain with France could end in murder.

[Tooting Carmen]

You are very lucky that there are few French people in the forum, daring to even remotely compare Spain with France could end in murder.

Looking at this database, France's GNI per capita is still higher than Spain's and even the UK's, but at the same time the other two countries (surprisingly, against all stereotypes) outperform France in terms of education, while Spain also has a better life expectancy than France. https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/...gin=BROWSELINK

In short, it seems that France has a bigger middle-class than Spain and the UK, but also a more problematic underclass (whether urban non-white or rural/small-town White).

[Cristiano viejo]

Looking at this database, France's GNI per capita is still higher than Spain's and even the UK's, but at the same time the other two countries (surprisingly, against all stereotypes) outperform France in terms of education, while Spain also has a better life expectancy than France. https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/...gin=BROWSELINK

In short, it seems that France has a bigger middle-class than Spain and the UK, but also a more problematic underclass (whether urban non-white or rural/small-town White).

Spain overcomes France in everything except salaries.

[Tooting Carmen]

Spain overcomes France in everything except salaries.

That is what I said.

[gixajo]

That is what I said.

I warned you, you shouldn't go down that path.

-If you buy a croissant, check inside that it doesn't have a bomb inside.

-If you see someone approaching with a baguette on the street, change the sidewalk, it could stick it in your chest using it.

-If a bottle of Champagne arrives at your home with an unknown sender,don´t drink it, throw it away, it may be poisoned.

-Do not buy any Delacroix painting, it could be impregnated with some radioactive element.

You're going too far, the French don't forget things like that easily.

[Tooting Carmen]

I warned you, you shouldn't go down that path.

-If you buy a croissant, check inside that it doesn't have a bomb inside.

-If you see someone approaching with a baguette on the street, change the sidewalk, it could stick it in your chest using it.

-If a bottle of Champagne arrives at your home with an unknown sender,don´t drink it, throw it away, it may be poisoned.

-Do not buy any Delacroix painting, it could be impregnated with some radioactive element.

You're going too far, the French don't forget things like that easily.

Well I am only describing contemporary realities. In another thread, I was discussing how the Irish Republic's HDI nowadays is somewhat higher than the UK's, when in fact before the 1980's the Republic's economy in both per capita terms and overall size was poorer than Wales.

[Sebastianus Rex]

I don't trust those indexes for several reasons...the Ile de France having the same hdi as southeast England is obviously a joke, France is more developed than the UK in almost every way (financial/speculative economy excepted), the infrastructure is incomparable, most of the UK looks like a gloomy post industrial shithole to be honest.

[Tooting Carmen]

I don't trust those indexes for several reasons...the Ile de France having the same hdi as southeast England is obviously a joke, France is more developed than the UK in almost every way (financial/speculative economy excepted), the infrastructure is incomparable, most of the UK looks like a gloomy post industrial shithole to be honest.

Well the HDI seems biased in favour of urban over rural areas in general, and France is a somewhat more sparsely-populated country than the UK. Besides, as you yourself have kind of acknowledged, its immigrant underclass is more problematic than ours, while many mostly White rural areas there aren't that affluent either.