MAURITIUS, June 23, 2015, (by Joseph E. Stiglitz, Slate Magazine): (HPI note: 48% of Mauritians are Hindus and the largest religious group on the island.) Suppose someone were to describe to you a small country that provided free education through university for all of its citizens, transportation for school children, and free health care–including heart surgery–for all. You might suspect that such a country is either phenomenally rich or on the fast track to fiscal crisis. After all, rich countries in Europe have increasingly found that they cannot pay for university education and are asking young people and their families to bear the costs. For its part, the United States has never attempted to give free college for all, and it took a bitter battle just to ensure that America’s poor get access to health care.
But Mauritius, a tropical island nation of 1.3 million people off the east coast of Africa, is neither particularly rich nor on its way to budgetary ruin. Nonetheless, it has spent the last decades successfully building a diverse economy, a democratic political system and a strong social safety net. Many countries, not least the United States, could learn from its experience. In a recent visit I had a chance to see some of the leaps Mauritius has taken–accomplishments that can seem bewildering in light of the debate in the United States and elsewhere.
Consider home ownership: While American conservatives say that the government’s attempt to extend homeownership to 70 percent of the U.S. population was responsible for the financial meltdown, 87 percent of Mauritians own their own homes–without fueling a housing bubble.
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