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Spain HEALTH AND WELFARE
![[JPEG]](http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/jpeg.gif)
View of Mondoņendo, Lugo Province
Courtesy National Tourist Office of Spain
According to several summary measures of social
welfare,
Spain could best be described as being at the low end of
the list
of advanced industrial countries. One such measure is the
Physical Quality of Life Index (PQLI) developed by the
Overseas
Development Council, an average of three indices--life
expectancy, infant mortality, and literacy. In 1980, on a
scale
of from 1 to 100, Iceland, Japan, the Netherlands, and
Sweden all
ranked at the top with scores of 98; Spain was
twenty-eighth out
of 164 countries--between Puerto Rico and Bulgaria--with a
score
of 92. Another measure, the Index of Net Social Progress
(INSP),
developed by Dr. Richard Estes of the University of
Pennsylvania,
uses data from eleven subindices, including education,
health,
the status of women, and welfare. On this scale, Spain,
with a
score of 122 for the 1979-80 period, ranked thirty-seventh
out of
107 countries, quite far behind most other West European
countries and comparable to several advanced Third World
states,
such as Mexico and Argentina. This lower rating stemmed
from
Spain's poor score in the Cultural Diversity Subindex,
where
ethnic and linguistic fragmentation caused Spain to fall
in the
ratings.
Data as of December 1988
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![[JPEG]](http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/spain/es02_06b.jpg)
