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Words cannot express our profound gratitude to those who have supported this project. We are grateful to our funders for believing in this initiative and for their steadfast support and encouragement. They include: the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation—Steven M. Hilton, Ed Cain, and Bill Pitkin—and the Lincy Foundation— Jeff Wilkins and Sothida Tan. We owe special thanks to the Social Science Research Council—particularly to our colleagues Craig Calhoun, Mary McDonnell, and Paul Price—for their support of the Project’s work. We are deeply indebted to our Advisory Panel, an engaged group that, acting in their personal capacities, provided invaluable guidance at every stage of the project, and to our Senior Statistical Advisor, Neil Bennett, for his expert advice. Responsibility for all errors, however, lies with us alone. We greatly appreciate the written contributions of Jeffrey D. Sachs and Darell Hammond. The report benefited from background papers commissioned from the following sectoral or thematic experts and researchers: Taylor Owen (human security), Jan Pierskalla and Erik Wibbels (natural resource curse), Radha Duggal Pennotti (health security), and Ted Lechterman (risks and resilience). In addition to suggestions from the Advisory Panel, Richard Arum, Richard Cebula, Josh DeWind, Pawanpreet Dhaliwal, John B. Johnson IV, Joe Karaganis, Walter W. McMahon, Will Nicholas, Joan Sanger, Eugene Steuerle, and Christiana Stoddard provided detailed and extremely helpful comments on various components of the manuscript. Neva Goodwin, Ken Prewitt, and Rob Wood engaged us with thoughtful conversation, for which we are truly grateful. Special thanks to Shareen Hertel for her subtitle suggestion. For statistical advice and assistance, many thanks to John Blodgett, Richard Hendra, David Lamoureux, Hannah Yang Moore, Jack Norton, and Sanjay Reddy. Hannah Burd, Sairah Husain, and Anne Tatlock provided valuable research support. Diana Tung provided vital assistance in the homestretch with good cheer and great attention to detail. At the Social Science Research Council, the following individuals provided critical support to various aspects of the project’s administration, finances, and communications: Sara Acosta, Jolanta Badura, Jennifer Carroll Blackman, Acknowledgments xvi THE MEASURE OF AMERICA 2010–2011 Sara Duvisac, Melissa Goss, Lisa Henderson, John Koprowski, Gail Kovach, Ebony Livingston, Zach Menchini, Diane Nasella, Siovahn Walker, Lisa Yanoti, and Zach Zinn. For their professional expertise, we owe tremendous thanks to: David Greenbaum, Keith Woodman, George Chaclas, and Glenn Pudelka of Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge LLP (legal); Jim Brasher, Becky Castle, and Pam Wuichet of Project Resource Group (fundraising); Michael Gordon, John Keaten, and Sam Nagourney of Group Gordon (communications); Jamie Kennard and the team at Krate (web development); and Rosten Woo, Sha Hwang, and Zach Watson of RMW Design (maps). To the talented professionals who turned the manuscript into an actual book, we owe a huge debt of gratitude; a thousand thanks to Frank Wilkinson, Bob Land, and the Humantific | UnderstandingLab team of Elizabeth Pastor, Garry VanPatter, Michael Babwahsingh, and Valentina Miosuro, who have once again outdone themselves . In discovering within a flat manuscript limitless dimensions of meaning, Humantific turned text and digits into a work of both art and sense. Thanks to Ilene Kalish, Despina Gimbel, Charles Hames, Aiden Amos, Betsy Steve, and the team at NYU Press for their excitement about and confidence in this project from the beginning, and their perseverance in seeing it through. As for the two other members of our core team, the dynamic duo of Patrick Nolan Guyer and Ted Lechterman, it’s difficult even to know where to start. Patrick’s statistical expertise, methodological rigor, and gentle but firm insistence on not letting the interpretation get ahead of the data kept the analysis on solid ground, and his gracious professionalism and good cheer were always in evidence. Ted’s research prowess, lovely writing, and keen analytical sense were a tremendous boon; he made crucial substantive contributions, not least of which was his fine work on the education chapter, all the while keeping the day-to-day operations on track with an almost uncanny level of productivity. We are enormously grateful for the enthusiastic, generous support of our dear parents, siblings, in-laws, extended families, and friends, many of whom are no doubt less spellbound by the results of the American Human Development Index than they kindly pretended to be. And last, but certainly not least, we must thank our husbands and children: David, Dalia, and Sophie Sharps and Paul, Zoë, Sophie, and Benjamin Lewis Ewing. We know too well that the intense periods of work associated with this book sometimes had negative impacts on their human development levels...

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