Mostly useless » Development http://www.mostly-useless.com/blog There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge (Bertrand Russell) Thu, 07 Jan 2010 18:58:43 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 Wealth or underdevelopment? http://www.mostly-useless.com/blog/2007/04/14/wealth-or-underdevelopment/ http://www.mostly-useless.com/blog/2007/04/14/wealth-or-underdevelopment/#comments Sat, 14 Apr 2007 13:50:29 +0000 simone http://www.mostly-useless.com/blog/2007/04/14/wealth-or-underdevelopment/ Traffico

The World Bank has interesting data about how many cars we have. It looks like some countries had a huge increase in cars per 1000 people over the last few years.

Rank Country 1999 2003
1 New Zealand 436 613
2 Canada 468 561
3 Germany 386 545
4 Italy 476 545
5 Switzerland 449 511
6 Austria 387 501
7 France 405 495
8 United States 573 482
9 Belgium 385 470
10 Sweden 426 455
11 Spain 309 455
12 Slovenia 289 446
13 United Kingdom 341 439
14 Japan 283 433
15 Finland 386 433
16 Portugal 162 429
17 Norway 380 424
18 Netherlands 368 383
19 Ireland 227 382
20 Lithuania 133 364

Now we have 6 countries over the “1 car every 2 people” threshold: New Zealand, Canada, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and Austria. The United States decreased their number of cars relative to population. Who is wealthier and who’s behind? Should we conclude that public transportation is a sign of really more advanced economies?

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