Eastern provinces at bottom of official ‘well-being’ list

ANKARA

Snow restricts access to villages in Turkey's eastern Muş province. AA Photo

Three provinces in Turkey’s east and southeast stood at the bottom of a list by the official Turkish Statistics Institute’s (TÜİK) that ranked “well-being” across the country last year, while the western province of Isparta topped the standings. 

Surprisingly, Tunceli, another relatively poor province in the east, received a high ranking on the education evaluation of the same TÜİK study. 

With an index value of 0.2765, the Muş province in Eastern Anatolia ranked worst in the main “well-being” category out of all 81 provinces, as Southeastern Anatolia’s Mardin province and Ağrı in the east followed, with 0.2936 and 0.2975 points respectively. Isparta stood at 0.6745 points.

The results came as the TÜİK’S annual index covered some eleven categories of life including housing, work life, income and wealth, health, education, environment, safety, civic engagement, access to infrastructure services and life satisfaction. 

The index value was measured between 0 and 1, with values closer to 1 representing a better standard of well-being.

Isparta was followed by the northwestern province of Sakarya with 0.6737 points and the Black Sea province of Bolu with 0.6553. 

Sakarya also took first place in the housing and civic engagement categories, while Isparta came on top in the health category.

Turkey’s biggest city, Istanbul, takes the top ranking in income, wealth, access to infrastructure services and social life. The remaining biggest cities, Ankara and İzmir, followed Istanbul in the income and wealth index as Adıyaman, another southeastern province, lagged behind all others. 

Some other provinces that received top rankings are Zonguldak in the work life category, Artvin in safety and Sinop in life satisfaction. 

In the index of environment, Kastamonu in Central Anatolia took first place with the value of 0.8111.

Meanwhile, industrialized Karabük and Bilecik also found low spots on the environmental category. Another province low in terms of environment was Iğdır in the east, with an index of 0.1955. The provinces of Muş and Hakkari followed.