In 2008, the inflation rate in the UK was in line with other major EU countries. The strength of the UK’s economy in 2007 and into 2008 is seen in the CPI edging a bit above that in other countries. Then the recession came and inflation fell everywhere – but not in the UK to such low rates. Ireland had it really hard as the chart shows. So, for nearly three years the UK has had a rate materially higher than the EU average and major European countries. Perhaps a case can be made that the urgency to get inflation down in the UK is not what it used to be?

Overlay from Timetric

The situation in the UK appears to be even worse if the index of the CPI is looked at. Looking at cumulative price increases since 2005, the UK is way ahead of most other countries. The CPI has risen by nearly 20% since 2005 compared to about 12% across the major industrial countries (G7). Japan and Switzerland have seen barely any inflation.

OECD.StatExtracts from Timetric

The plight of Britain’s comsumers could be even worse than the above charts indicate as the RPI – viewed by many as more indicative of the impact of rising prices in the high street has been rising more strongly than the internationally comparable CPI.

Overlay from Timetric

OECD Economic Outlook Database (version 88) from Timetric

Within the OECD, countries have seen huge disparities in performance. The UK and Euro area performance has been almost identical over the last couple of years. Japan saw a good recovery with the growth rate peaking at 3.7% in 2010, but this has been falling steadily since and the trend is expected to continue. In contrast, US growth rate is expected to rise to 3.3% by 2012.

OECD Economic Outlook Database (version 88) from Timetric

Australia, Poland, Israel and South Korea were the countries least affected by the crisis. A combination of healthy/small banking sectors, successful government interventions and trade/exchange rate policies meant that none of the four economies had a year of falling output.

OECD Economic Outlook Database (version 88) from Timetric

Greece remains the worst performing economy in the OECD – the recovery has been a very flat U-shape – although positive growth is expected by 2012. The Slovak Republic suffered the worst reversal of fortunes; growth fell from 10.6% in  2007 to -4.7% by 2009. Turkey enjoyed the best recovery: growth rates hit a peak of 8.2% in 2009.

OECD Economic Outlook Database (version 88) from Timetric

OECD countries in general tend to have a higher average life expectancy than non-OECD countries. In the graph below, the OECD-average is above all the other selected countries.

OECD Factbook 2010 from Timetric

Furthermore, there is significant variation in average life expectancy among countries within the OECD. In the 2010 OECD Factbook, which contains data to 2007, Japan had the highest life expectancy among OECD member nations at 82.6 years, while Turkey and Hungary had the lowest life expectancies at 73.4 and 73.3 years respectively. Additionally, it’s worth noting that while Turkey’s life expectancy has increased steadily over the last decade – by about a total of 3 years – Hungary’s growth (in common with many in Eastern Europe) has been much more erratic.

OECD Factbook 2010 from Timetric

So how does the UK measure up in Western Europe? Middle of the road is the short answer. Italy and Spain are the longest-lived countries at an average of over 81 years in both cases. The average UK life expectancy is not far adrift from that in France and Germany – and all three have edged up pretty much in line.

OECD Factbook 2010 from Timetric

There have been more interesting trends in some of the other countries. Average life expectancy in Ireland has jumped significantly since the late 1990s – just under 4 years during the last decade – over-taking both the OECD average and the UK. The case of the Netherlands is also interesting – leading the pack 30-40 years ago but now middling. Denmark has also failed to keep up with improvements elsewhere.

You’re probably reading this on a broadband connection: I’m certainly writing it on one. This data, from the OECD, shows how many broadband connections there are per 100 people in each of the developed countries.

Adoption’s now beginning to slow, and settling at a lower level in the UK and the US than it’s reached in Denmark. There are two effects to explain here — why adoption’s slowing, and why there are more broadband connections in Denmark.

Let’s look at the second first. The average American household is 2.59 people; in Britain it’s slightly smaller at 2.35 (as of 2007), and in Denmark it’s only 2.2 people, again as of 2007. It’s safe enough to assume that most households — at least, before people started getting smartphones! — have at most one broadband connection, so that means around 67 out of every 100 people in both the UK and the US have broadband at home; in Denmark it’s somewhat higher at 82 per 100.

This suggests why adoption’s slowing too: simply put, market saturation. The relative rate of new connections is lower in Denmark than in the UK or US, but most people who want — or can afford — access to broadband now have it.

And, interestingly, even when you compare very different countries with very different economic circumstances, such as the famously wired Korea and the rapidly-developing post-communist Czech Republic, you see similar patterns of broadband adoption, just shifted by a few years:

Good news for people like us and for services like ours!