The Lottery of Life: Where To Be Born in 2013 | Hacker News Reader

The Lottery of Life: Where To Be Born in 2013

economist.com

On the substance of the submitted article, I find it interesting that Taiwan outranks (a little) the United States as a place to be born in 2013 by the methodology used here by the editors of The Economist. The listing is broadly plausible, but of course in most countries it is better to be born as a well-off person in a stable family than as a member of that country's underclass in an unstable family.

The lottery of HN submissions: when to submit to be noticed? That question is raised by the two previous submissions of this interesting article.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4819542

(40 days ago, 4 points, no comments)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4863788

(29 days ago, NOT canonical URL, 6 points, one comment)

I wasn't aware it'd already been submitted. You're right that it's a bit of a lottery.

Being in Australia, I find that stuff submitted in (my) morning seems to catch some Europeans and night owls in the USA, from whom only a few upvotes are required to climb the rankings.

Once you hit the front page, you're golden.

It's only been in the last few years I've realised how lucky I've been: born in a stable, prosperous country to stable, intelligent parents.

I think the "birth lottery" is the single biggest stroke of luck there is. It's so influential that people just don't see it. It's the elephant in the room.

I'd be interested to see this list modified by profession. Australia might be #2 on a general basis, but it would be hard to argue that being born in the USA gives you the inside edge on getting ahead in the web industry, for example.

Only one thing worries me:

> Small economies dominate the top ten.

They also dominate the bottom 10. Might this be a sampling effect?

Some of those countries in the bottom ten have quite large populations and land areas too. They are also desperately poor, with inadequate infrastructure, corrupt ineffectual governments, and lack a substantial civil society willing & able to put pressure on the government to implement the necessary developmental changes & reforms necessary for their country to develop and to bring up the necessary living standards.

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell as I'm sure many folks on HN have read really digs into how external factors (time, school registration dates, etc) have a significant impact of the success of individuals. Having just completed reading it, I thought this was an interesting article.

at least brazil wasn't overrated again.

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