STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF THE EUROPEAN UNION COUNTRIES USING THE METHOD OF STANDARD VARIABLE

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to compare the European Union countries on the basis of selected socio-economic and demographic indicators for the year 2016. The following indicators are selected for analysis: gross domestic product per capita, government gross debt as a percentage of gross domestic product, inflation rate, unemployment rate, total fertility rate, infant mortality rate and crude divorce rate. The contributions of the paper are to order the countries on the basis of the above-mentioned indicators, from the best country to the worst country using one of the multidimensional comparison methods – the method of standard variable. The aim of this method is to replace a number of selected indicators with one final characteristic – an integral indicator. Since the used indicators do not have the same weights, calculations are used on data weighted by weights I (calculated using the coefficient of variation) and weights II (calculated on the basis of the correlation matrix). When evaluating the EU countries on the basis of the selected indicators using the method of standard variable; Luxembourg, Ireland, Denmark and France ranked first. Among the worst countries we include Greece, Hungary, Spain and Portugal. JEL Classification Numbers: C40, E24, J01, J13, DOI: 10.12955/cbup.v7.1359