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Data Collection
May. 24th, 2021 02:21 pmAs I said in my post yesterday, we may need to leave Russia at some point in the future. We will need to decide both where to go and when to leave, and being me, I want to do this in a very thorough, systematic way. This means collecting a lot of data on countries. However, to do that, one needs to decide what data to collect.
My criteria has changed a lot since we last made these decisions in 2012. Back then, I was looking for inexpensive places where people weren't really emotionally expressive, as I can find other people's emotions to be stressful. We found this study (or something like it), which helped us decide to focus on Eastern Europe. These days, I'm better at setting boundaries with others and less traumatized by other people, and my goals have changed to focus on finding someplace that is stable and free from a lot of the problems that I see in the US and Russia. I'm also less concerned about standing out, as previously my experience had been in Benin, where it was difficult to be a white foreigner. Since then, I've traveled in Asia and have felt more comfortable being an obvious outsider.
To make my list of criteria, I started out with the CIA World Fact Book, which gave me a good idea of what kinds of basic data it would be useful to know, like languages spoken, religions, land area, elevation changes, life expectancy, GDP per capita, and land use. The list from that is pretty long by itself and covers everything from physical statistics to the economy. To get a lot of this data, since I couldn't get it from the World Fact Book without copying it by hand, I went to the World Bank, where you can find information on things like population and pollution. Of course, hunting around there, I found a bunch of other interesting data, like on cigarette use. It is important for me to get the data from a source that is reliable, frequently updated, and will be around in a few years, because if we don't end up moving for five years, we may want to revisit our options as our desires and needs change. I want to be able to download that data again without a whole lot of difficulty, so I'm keeping close track of all my sources and plan on having all that info stored somewhere for when I need to update it later. I also am going to write scripts that will allow me to easily update the data.
I had also been writing down every kind of criteria I could think of for weeks, and one of the things that I had come up with was "good governance". Of course, that is a nice buzzword, but coming up with what it actually means and a non-biased measure of it isn't so easy. Wikipedia has a page on it with lots of different definitions. According to the article, "Nayef Al-Rodhan, in his 2009 book Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man: A Philosophy of History and Civilisational Triumph, proposed eight minimum criteria for ensuring good national governance. Al-Rodhan's eight minimum criteria are: 1) participation, equity, and inclusiveness, 2) rule of law, 3) separation of powers, 4) free, independent, and responsible media, 5) government legitimacy, 6) accountability, 7) transparency, and 8) limiting the distorting effect of money in politics."
I decided to start with this list, since it had some concise terms that I could use in searches. Number two, "rule of law", led me to the World Justice Project, which has their Rule of Law Index. As you can read on their page, it covers a lot of things that go into "good governance". They provide a downloadable spreadsheet of all their current and historical data, which will allow me to not only see what is going on at the moment in a country but also chart how this has changed. Number four on the list, "free, independent, and responsible media", is made a lot easier by data from Reporters Without Borders and their press freedom ranking.
One of the things you find in looking at lists of criteria for places to live is that these are subjective criteria. What is important to me, like not having to live under the regime of a bunch of repressive assholes, may not be important to someone else. I have certainly seen this in cost of living lists, where they rate the costs of restaurants and servants, neither of which I am interested in. There are people, I'm sure, who are not unhappy living in a country that keeps reporters from rocking the boat and don't mind if a governor skims a little off the top. These kinds of things generally are bad signs for a country, though, and so something I would prefer to avoid.
Two of the other scales I decided to use in this section on the basic stats about a country were the Political Terror Scale and the Global Food Security Index. It is probably clear why both of these would be useful.
Those are some of the more general level statistics about countries that I thought would be useful. Tomorrow, I plan on talking about the metrics that I'm collecting that are more personally relevant.
My criteria has changed a lot since we last made these decisions in 2012. Back then, I was looking for inexpensive places where people weren't really emotionally expressive, as I can find other people's emotions to be stressful. We found this study (or something like it), which helped us decide to focus on Eastern Europe. These days, I'm better at setting boundaries with others and less traumatized by other people, and my goals have changed to focus on finding someplace that is stable and free from a lot of the problems that I see in the US and Russia. I'm also less concerned about standing out, as previously my experience had been in Benin, where it was difficult to be a white foreigner. Since then, I've traveled in Asia and have felt more comfortable being an obvious outsider.
To make my list of criteria, I started out with the CIA World Fact Book, which gave me a good idea of what kinds of basic data it would be useful to know, like languages spoken, religions, land area, elevation changes, life expectancy, GDP per capita, and land use. The list from that is pretty long by itself and covers everything from physical statistics to the economy. To get a lot of this data, since I couldn't get it from the World Fact Book without copying it by hand, I went to the World Bank, where you can find information on things like population and pollution. Of course, hunting around there, I found a bunch of other interesting data, like on cigarette use. It is important for me to get the data from a source that is reliable, frequently updated, and will be around in a few years, because if we don't end up moving for five years, we may want to revisit our options as our desires and needs change. I want to be able to download that data again without a whole lot of difficulty, so I'm keeping close track of all my sources and plan on having all that info stored somewhere for when I need to update it later. I also am going to write scripts that will allow me to easily update the data.
I had also been writing down every kind of criteria I could think of for weeks, and one of the things that I had come up with was "good governance". Of course, that is a nice buzzword, but coming up with what it actually means and a non-biased measure of it isn't so easy. Wikipedia has a page on it with lots of different definitions. According to the article, "Nayef Al-Rodhan, in his 2009 book Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man: A Philosophy of History and Civilisational Triumph, proposed eight minimum criteria for ensuring good national governance. Al-Rodhan's eight minimum criteria are: 1) participation, equity, and inclusiveness, 2) rule of law, 3) separation of powers, 4) free, independent, and responsible media, 5) government legitimacy, 6) accountability, 7) transparency, and 8) limiting the distorting effect of money in politics."
I decided to start with this list, since it had some concise terms that I could use in searches. Number two, "rule of law", led me to the World Justice Project, which has their Rule of Law Index. As you can read on their page, it covers a lot of things that go into "good governance". They provide a downloadable spreadsheet of all their current and historical data, which will allow me to not only see what is going on at the moment in a country but also chart how this has changed. Number four on the list, "free, independent, and responsible media", is made a lot easier by data from Reporters Without Borders and their press freedom ranking.
One of the things you find in looking at lists of criteria for places to live is that these are subjective criteria. What is important to me, like not having to live under the regime of a bunch of repressive assholes, may not be important to someone else. I have certainly seen this in cost of living lists, where they rate the costs of restaurants and servants, neither of which I am interested in. There are people, I'm sure, who are not unhappy living in a country that keeps reporters from rocking the boat and don't mind if a governor skims a little off the top. These kinds of things generally are bad signs for a country, though, and so something I would prefer to avoid.
Two of the other scales I decided to use in this section on the basic stats about a country were the Political Terror Scale and the Global Food Security Index. It is probably clear why both of these would be useful.
Those are some of the more general level statistics about countries that I thought would be useful. Tomorrow, I plan on talking about the metrics that I'm collecting that are more personally relevant.
Previous: Part 1 - Preparation for Change |
Next: Part 3 - Personal Preferences
