Decline in world peace has cost you $2,000

The world peace index is an annual report compiled by the Institute of Economic Peace (IEP) based in Australia. As the name suggests, the institution is focused on quantifying peace and it’s value to the economy. An objective measure of peace is a difficult concept to establish. To remedy this, a diverse expert panel is used to hand pick the variables that go into deciding the numerical measure that determines each countries peace value.

Expert panel chosen to select the 2019 peace indicators.

The decided indicators for peace have held since 2007. However, how much each category influences the final value changes depending on the team of experts. For example, the index reached the conclusion of providing a 60 to 40 percent distribution to internal affairs and external affairs respectively. The agreement follows the logic that internal peacefulness would breed a culture that would engage in less external aggression. Rigorous discussion is encouraged around the effectiveness of each indicator among republics of the world to encourage more diverse measures of peace to be reported by various other agencies.

Chosen indicators of peace.

It goes without saying that the world should always strive to see more countries improving than those that do not. Within a year, 86 countries improved in this measure of peacefulness, while 76 countries deteriorated. The report also indicates that the 25 least peaceful countries deteriorated by 11.8%, while the 25 most peaceful countries improved by 1.7%. This results in an average global .09% improvement in peace since last year and a 3.78% decrease in global peacefulness since 2008. While this year's net positive peacefulness is small, it should be met with optimism and a desire to achieve better results for future measures.

Violence has cost the world $14.1 trillion which amounts to $1,853 per person. With such large numbers, one might be surprised to hear that this is the first time since 2012 that the world has seen the global impact of violence improve, saving the world $475 billion. Militarization has seen the largest improvement of all the categories, resulting in the surprising measure that the impact of suicide had a stronger effect on the economy than the entire armed conflict category; costing the world $737 billion. Other points of interest include Europe landing as the most peaceful region, while the Middle East and northern Africa remain the least peaceful. America and Canada have been grouped together to represent the North America continent. However, with Canada ranking significantly higher than the United States, most of the region’s decline in peace has been brought on by the US.

List of countries by peacefulness with the US ranking at 128.

While there is much more information to be highlighted in the report, the following will mostly be discussing how the United States ranks in peacefulness. Within a year, America fell four places down the chart of countries allowing it to be sandwiched between the more peaceful South Africa and less peaceful Saudi Arabia. The decline in peacefulness has been a trend that America has participated in since 2016. This earns its rank as the 128th most peaceful country; but with 163 countries listed, it might be better to describe it as the 35th least peaceful country.

The lower ranking for 2019 was prompted by the United States increase in military expenditure making it the third least peaceful nation in the category of militarization (right in between Russia and North Korea). This makes sense considering that the United States spends roughly half of its budget on the military (more than the next ten countries combined). For comparison, NASA only receives .5% of the national budget. The demand for the high military budget is reflected in public opinion as 90 percent of Americans have trust in the security of their country even though opinions in police security have fallen since 2008. Ongoing conflict is also a contributor to America's decline in peacefulness; as well as a decrease in UN peacekeeping funding. Apart from militarization, the United States also dropped heavily in the safety and security category due to an increase in violent crime and homicide rates.

To read the full report click here. You can also read the summary on their website here. The full report is 100 pages, so it could be knocked out in just ten days if you read ten pages a day. It is also divided into five sections: results, global trends, economic impact, positive peace, and appendices. For more information, click here to see a panel streamed by the Center for Strategic & International Studies which will be released tomorrow (June 20th, 2019 at 9 am).

The global peace index is a great attempt to measure the peace value of the countries of the world. It is always interesting to see your country climb or fall in the ranks of what might be the most important measure for a country to have. If everyone kept a close eye on how their countries ranked each year we could increase the perspective that would allow us to be making a stronger effort in building a more peaceful world.