Welfare in Retirement as per GRI

As I am a bit surprised that Singapore ranked pretty low in the Quality of Life sub-index (41 out of 44 countries to be precise) of the Global Retirement index (GRI), I downloaded the report to better understand the factors leading to such poor showing. The GRI has 4 sub-index namely, Health, Quality of Life, Material Well Being and Finances in Retirement Index

The Quality of Life sub-index is a composite of:

1. Happiness Index
2. Natural Environment Index comprising-
• Air Quality Index
• Water and Sanitation Index
• Biodiversity and Habitat Index
• Environment Factor Index

Believing that we should be fairly good in the Air and Water indexes, I look up the description of the others. The Happiness Index is derived from "responses by people asked to evaluate the quality of their current lives on a scale of 0 to 10 averaged over the years 2016 - 2018".

The Biodiversity and habitat index "provides an insight into a country's protection of its ecosystem. The higher the score, the more a country is capable to ensure a wide range of ecosystem service like flood control and soil renewal, the production of commodities, and spiritual and aesthetic fulfillment will remain available for current and future generations".

The Environment index " is calculated as the weighted average of CO2 emissions per capita (1/3 weight), CO2 emissions per GDP (1/3 weight), CO2 emissions per electricity generation (1/6 weight) and renewable electricity (1/6 weight)".

In terms of another sub-index of the GRI called Material Well-Being index Singapore shared the 30th place with 2 other countries out of 44 . This sub-index is a composite of Income per capita index, Income Inequality Index and Unemployment Index.

Strangely enough, although we ranked 28 out of 44 in the overall global ranking, we did top in a sub-index which our only newspaper company highlighted in bold print. We are top for the Finances Retirement Index which one would have thought is about adequacy in retirement savings etc. Quite the contrary it really is a measure of the soundness of the country's financial system and include macro factors like Institutional Strength Index, Government Indebtedness Index and Inflation Index etc. Of course we top this index. Since we fall out of the first 25 countries the Report does not highlight Singapore much except for the segment under this sub-index which reads:

"Singapore marginally beats New Zealand for the top spot in the Finances sub-index, both with rounded scores of 79% the past three years. This compares to a low of 52% in both Quality of Life and Material Well being for Singapore".

So what kind of questions should we be asking ? What are the reasons that make Singaporeans unhappy and rate their quality of current life lowly? Could it be inequality, poor ecosystem protection, absence of aesthetic fulfillment?

Well we always brag ourselves as topping this and that in various area of global ranking but clearly we rank behind other first world peers in Retirement index.

Is the aspired Swiss standards of living a dream?