The NZ Institute Scorecard
The NZ Institute has published an update on its scorecard of 16 measures to assess how NZ is doing. Their summary:
Social
- Life Expectancy B
- Unemployment C
- Income Inequality D
- Assault Mortality D
- Suicide C
Economic
- GDP per capita C
- household Wealth D
- Labour productivity D
- Innovation D
- Educational Achievement B
Environmental
- Agricultural land per capita B
- Water Quality C
- CO2 concentration D
- CO2e per capita D
- Invasive species C
Overall they give a C grade, the same as last time. They note:
There is an improving trend for five of the measures and deterioration for four. New Zealand gets three B grades reflecting valuable strengths in education, agricultural land per capita and life expectancy. But there are also still seven D grades and not one A grade.
And
With widespread recognition of the issues New Zealand faces, and action in place to improve outcomes on almost all the measures, there is definitely evidence of effort. However, the efforts are not all well-directed and some do not comply with best practice for performance management. There are not clear and widely understood strategies for success. Progress toward goals is not always monitored and reported, and efforts in one area are not always well coordinated with other efforts. On balance, New Zealanders care and are taking action. Overall an unchanged grade of B- for effort.
Moving some of those grades is not something that can be done in just a year or two. Some of them are very long-term. But hopefully the NZ Institute will keeps its scorecard going for many years, as an interesting ongoing assessment. Their summary is also below.
