15 October (Auckland) On the numbers, there’s little dispute over who’s favourite to win on social equality here. France’s number 6 place on our rankings (just below NZ) is earned through high places on gender equality and the happy planet index, and a good showing on income equality (its Gini measure of 32.7 places it 5th among the rugby nat ...

QF 3: Australia v South Africa (Wellington) On the rugby stats, South Africa could be expected to dominate on the field, but on our social equality rankings, it comes a lowly 18th and would be out of the competition at this phase. Australia ranks 8th, aided by a much better Gini coefficient of 35 on a 0-100 scale (where 0 represents total equality ...

24 September (Auckland) Close rivals on the rugby pitch, New Zealand and France are also evenly matched on our social equality rankings – at 5th and 6th respectively. But just as they play two very different styles on the field, they’re also quite divergent on the individual indicators that led to those rankings. France is the better performer ...

16 September (Hamilton) New Zealand and Japan square off tonight in a match that will be tinged with sadness and remembrance – as it begins with a minute’s silence to remember the victims of the Christchurch earthquakes and Japan tsunami earlier this year. There’s little question who will win on the field (am I tempting fate?). But on our mea ...

Sunday 11 September The teams in Pool C get their foot to the ball for the first time today, with Australia playing Italy in Albany, and the United States facing off against Ireland in New Plymouth. Ireland will be favoured to win over the US. They also outrank on our measures of social fairness – Ireland being at no 2 in our overall rankings ...

New Zealand likes to look great on the world stage, but we’re not so good at looking after our own people. We look better than some other countries in the indicators on this site for international aid contributions, military spending and environmental matters.  So we come out better in the rankings than we would if we were just looking at the in ...

While the nation awaits kick-off for the 6-week countdown to find out who’ll come out on top of the international rugby scrum, we’ve been crunching the numbers to see which of the 20 nations comes out on top in relative social equality.  We want to get people thinking about both local and global inequality – in association with the Caritas S ...