COLUMN ONE : Life in U.S., Graded on the Curve : Compared to other nations, America scores high in areas such as home conveniences and national wealth. But it trails many when rated on personal poverty and leisure time.

If the success of a society is in putting a roof over everyone’s head--even if it is made of palm fronds--then the United States can learn a lot from ancient tribes in the Amazon.

“Everybody has a place to put their hammock,” said John H. Bodley, an anthropologist at Washington State University, speaking of the Yanomamo people in Brazil and Venezuela.

Then again, most people in the 1990s have a different vision of the good life. The typical wish list, say, might feature a handful of modern conveniences, a secure job, a cozy home and a reasonable shot at getting ahead.

How does America’s standard of living stack up in the world these days? Better than you might expect by some gauges, and perhaps worse by others. In comparison to other societies, the United States emerges as a hodgepodge of contradictions, bests, worsts and in-betweens--all coexisting in uneasy proximity.

It ranks first in billionaires but first also “in children living in poverty among the 19 major industrial nations,” declares author Andrew L. Shapiro in “We’re Number One,” a 1992 book of global rankings. “We’re No. 1 in health care spending and we’re No. 1 in infant mortality . . . .

“The United States is wealthy and poor,” Shapiro said, “medically advanced and chronically ill, highly educated and highly uninformed.”

The question of the nation’s economic well-being has become a monumental issue, shaking people’s confidence in the future, even prompting voters to toss out an incumbent President. More than half of Americans say they believe that the nation remains mired in recession, even though the experts say the slump officially ended almost two years ago.

President Clinton is gambling his presidency on a plan to improve conditions for the long run. In the process, he has fueled a heated national debate on taxes, spending cuts and the need for personal sacrifice.

But as the nation struggles to come to terms with its ailments, the ensuing debate often has gaping holes. Statistics are incomplete, short-term and interpreted differently. Abstract concepts like productivity are tossed about with little clear link to people’s daily lives.

Rarely does the rhetoric get to the heart of people’s experience of their economy, the trade-offs they must make for a modicum of security, a measure of serenity, a chance to enjoy the things that they have.

The success of an economy, after all, is more than just a measure of its gross domestic product or the trend in its unemployment rate.

Milton Friedman, the Nobel laureate economist, recalls that when he was a Columbia University graduate student during the Depression, America suffered painful economic woes. But “the subways were clean. They cost a nickel. Nobody was afraid (of street crime). . . . Is New York a more livable place or less livable place than it was then?”

Clearly, there are hazards in trying to compare today’s standard of living to that of different times or places. Cultural values clash or, at the very least, evolve. Statistics often are not comparable. Any single comparison provides at best just a meager fragment of the truth.

How can we explain that Denmark, widely admired for its affluence, generous social safety net and democratic tradition, also has one of the world’s highest suicide rates?

Similarly, it is not accurate to point out that the Yanomamo enjoy far greater income equality than modern-day Americans without also noting that they have traditionally made do without electric power, indoor plumbing and clothes.

For all the pitfalls, however, comparing the United States to other countries is an exercise in shattering myths. No single detail gives the full picture. But taken together the different categories create a more subtly shaded portrait of the U.S. standard of living than emerges from routine statistics.

Think of it as a report card:

THINGS PEOPLE HAVE: A

Americans have reason to worry about the economy, but they are still pampered compared to most of the world. U.S. households rank near the top in purchases of microwave ovens, food processors, consumer electronics and most other modern luxuries.

In 1990, 84% of U.S. households owned a microwave oven, 69% owned a VCR and 27% had a home computer. By contrast, in affluent western Germany, just 36% owned microwaves, 37% owned VCRs and 16% had a home computer.

Even in Japan, wealth only partially trickles down to average working people. By a slight margin, fewer Japanese households owned VCRs (66.8%) than their U.S. counterparts, and slightly less than 70% had microwaves.

A 1991 survey by the Union Bank of Switzerland found that on average, workers in 12 typical occupations around the world, such as bus driver and schoolteacher, had to work 26 minutes to earn enough for a Big Mac and large order of French fries.

In Los Angeles and Zurich, it took just 20 minutes, whereas it took almost four hours in Mexico City.

NATIONAL WEALTH: A

True or False? In terms of their size, Japan and Germany have surpassed the United States in national riches. Answer: False.

When the size of each national economy is divided by the country’s population, Americans on average still hold the largest slice of the pie among major industrial powers.

The share of wealth for Germans and Canadians each was about 13% smaller than for Americans in 1991. The Japanese were about 1 percentage point down the ladder. By other calculations, Switzerland and Luxembourg are almost at the U.S. level, but not quite.

In 1990, U.S. manufacturing employees remained the world’s highest paid, just ahead of Germany, according to the Economic Policy Institute. The reason: U.S. productivity remains tops in the world, although gains have bogged down since the 1970s.

On the negative side, free--some would say profligate--spending has helped fuel all that U.S. buying. Americans’ low savings rates are one of the reasons U.S. households consume so much more--30%--than those in Japan or Germany, said Robert E. Lipsey, an economist at New York University.

Government debt also has helped prop up the United States. U.S. red ink, relative to the size of the economy, is more than six times the share of government debt in Japan, for example.

But for all its magnitude, government debt remains a smaller share of the giant U.S. economy than in Canada or the Netherlands. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, an international organization that promotes economic development, classified the United States as a “medium debt” nation.

SATISFACTION: B-plus

Microwaves may not bring happiness, but they don’t hurt either. Material well-being is linked to national measures of satisfaction, and the United States ranks in the middle of the affluent pack.

“There is a strong tendency for richer countries to have more satisfied and happy populations,” said Ronald F. Inglehart, a political scientist at the University of Michigan. On Inglehart’s “subjective well-being index” of 39 countries, people in poor countries, including Russia and India, ranked near the bottom. Iceland was the big winner, whereas the United States scored eighth. Japan was the real “underachiever,” however, coming in just 21st.

A smaller, separate study comparing the lives of production workers in the United States, Germany, Britain and Japan ranked the United States somewhere in the middle.

The survey, which was conducted by Yoshio Yoshida, a visiting Japanese scholar at Memphis State University, queried workers on everything from their daily commutes to the length of time they worked each week.

Yoshida rated Germany tops in quality of work and personal life, followed by Britain, the United States and Japan--which suffers from the “absence of a margin of comfort” in daily life, he said.

CLIMBING THE LADDER: B

If the United States is the fabled land of opportunity, many of its have-nots never see the payoff. Many others succeed, however--a complex reality that continues to stir debate over social policy.

An Urban Institute analysis of 4,829 working-age adults found that slightly fewer than half who were on the bottom fifth of the income ladder in the late 1970s managed to climb out by the mid-1980s; just about half of those on the top fifth slipped downward.

For the bottom fifth overall, average income jumped 77% in that period. Incomes of the top fifth overall grew by 5%.

Nonetheless, to the disappointment of some researchers, the pace of upward mobility appears no faster than it was in the 1970s, said analysts Isabel V. Sawhill and Mark Condon at the Urban Institute, a Washington think tank.

Stagnant mobility trends, combined with downward pressure on wages for the unskilled, relates directly to the rich-poor gulf in the United States and suggests that “lifetime incomes are becoming more unequal,” the researchers found.

America’s up escalator appears to be moving at about the same speed as in other advanced nations, some studies suggest. One analysis found that households in the bottom 10% of income had about an equal chance of rising up the income ladder in the United States as in France and the Netherlands.

The poor in Canada and Ireland did better, but have-nots in Sweden did worse, said Greg J. Duncan, a program director at the University of Michigan’s survey research center.

HEALTH: C-plus

When it comes to health, America merits average grades for a rich nation. But it sure spends a lot in the health-care stampede--13.4% of its entire economy, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. That’s by far the largest share in the advanced world.

Japan, with a longer life expectancy than the United States, devotes less than half as great a share of its economy to health spending--just 6.6%.

What do Americans get for all their money? A jumble of contradictions. U.S. haves rank high by many measures of well-being; have-nots are statistically similar to impoverished residents of the Third World.

With 7% of its infants having low birth weights, the United States performs worse than 34 other countries, according to UNICEF, the U.N. children’s fund. But the rate for U.S. blacks was almost twice as high, comparable to struggling Third World nations such as Zaire. U.S. Latinos had a slightly better-than-average incidence of low-birth-weight babies, at 6.1%.

America’s infant mortality rate (9.1 deaths per 1,000 live births) was nothing to brag about, falling behind 19 other countries. But the 17.9 rate for U.S. blacks was in another category altogether--worse than much of Eastern Europe and parts of the Caribbean. U.S. Latinos had a 7.8 infant mortality rate, slightly better than the U.S. average.

Overall, the U.S. life expectancy of slightly more than 76 years is undistinguished in the advanced world.

HOUSING: C

Myth: Americans are more likely to own their homes than people in other countries. In fact, the American desire for homeownership is a dream realized by millions throughout the world.

The U.S. homeownership rate--more than 60% of households--places it slightly higher than Japan, but below Norway, Britain and other countries, according to a recent analysis by the Economist magazine.

But it is hard to draw conclusions. Out of 18 countries, one of the poorest--Ireland--was the leader, and wealthy Switzerland stood last. One reason: “People in rural areas are more likely to own their homes than those in cities,” the magazine said.

Overall, U.S. home affordability seems to compare well, according to a spot check by the Arthur Andersen Real Estate Services Group, even though residents of high-cost regions have a tough time. (Just 32% of Los Angeles households can afford a typical home, according to the California Assn. of Realtors. That is hardly more than half the U.S. rate of 57%.)

Americans last year paid about four years’ worth of income to buy a typical house, according to an informal review by the firm.

For Australians and the British, the price of a median home was closer to five years of income. And the Japanese, it appears, paid more than six years’ worth of income.

JOBS FOR EVERYONE: C

A decent, full-time job--the surest life raft in any successful economy--is tantalizingly out of reach for millions of Americans. Forget the unemployment rate--it does not even count those who have given up the job search.

Economists have a better way to tally the number of working-age adults who are marooned outside the workplace. It’s called the “inactivity rate.”

By this gauge, the United States comes out a bit below average among advanced countries. U.S. males ages 25 to 54 had an inactivity rate of 6.9% in the 1980s, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The average for 16 countries was a bit lower--5.9%. In hard-working Japan, just 3.1% were not active in the work force. At the other extreme, Italy measured 8.3%.

It is also revealing to look at the ranks of workers saddled in part-time jobs who wish they could find full-time work. Today, 6.2 million employees--about one in every 20 workers--share that predicament.

That is up a surprising 3.1% since the national recession officially ended in 1991; if the economy had followed the path of the last five recoveries, the ranks of involuntary part-timers would have shrunk 15.7% by now, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The pressure is global: Analysts say they believe that similar trends may be under way in Europe.

POVERTY: C-minus

U.S. statistics are shabby compared to other advanced nations, but there is a twist. The U.S. poverty rate is similar to many other countries’--possibly better-- before welfare and other government aid reach people’s households.

But once public assistance enters the picture, the rankings shift dramatically. Other countries lift a much larger share of their poor out of poverty than does the United States. U.S. poverty rates are more than double those of many other advanced nations. Statistics on children are even worse.

In France, for example, 21% of children were counted as poor in the mid-1980s before they received public aid. But once help from the French government kicked in, the figure fell dramatically to 5%. In the United States, a similar 22% of children were initially counted as poor--but U.S. government aid only improved the figure to 20%.

International comparisons can be tricky, however.

Low-income Americans are more likely than poor Germans, Swedes or French to have a complete bathroom or fully equipped kitchen, said Susan E. Mayer, a sociologist at the University of Chicago. America’s poor are also more likely to have a car than those in Sweden, Canada and France.

Scholars are not sure why U.S. have-nots have more of those things than other countries’ have-nots, but America’s overall wealth may be one of the reasons, Mayer said.

SHARING RICHES: C-minus

That infamous gulf between the rich and poor that you have heard so much about is not just a U.S. problem. It is worse here, though.

Throughout the advanced world, new technologies seem to have pushed up pay for workers sophisticated enough to handle them. Similarly, the value of a college education has gone up most everywhere. Wages, meanwhile, have been pressured downward for the least-skilled.

Researchers have observed the trend in much of Western Europe, although it was most pronounced in Britain and the United States, where anti-poverty policies are often criticized. “They all have the same disease,” said Peter Gottschalk, an economist at Boston College.

The Congressional Budget Office calculated that more than half of the after-tax income gains of the 1980s went to the richest 1% of American households, while the bottom 40% actually lost income.

Overall, U.S. household incomes were less equal than in Britain, western Germany and a handful of other advanced countries in the late 1980s, according to an index developed by the late Italian scholar Corrado Gini. But U.S. incomes were a bit more equal than those in France or Italy, and much more equal than those in many less-developed nations, said Denny Braun, a sociologist at Mankato State University in Minnesota.

Executives in major U.S. corporations are a special elite: Findings vary, but one study concluded that American chief executives take home 160 times the pay and benefits of average workers--a gulf that is 10 times larger than in Japan.

LEISURE TIME: D

Time to smell the roses, wrestle with the kids, stare glassy-eyed at a personal computer--or whatever you do off the job--is becoming an endangered commodity. Only the Japanese, it appears, stick around at work longer than Americans do. (A Japanese supermarket attendant died in 1990 after toiling 360 days in a row.)

Some workers in Western European countries now enjoy more than 40 paid days off a year. Americans get roughly half that, said Juliet B. Schor, a Harvard University economist who notes that the U.S. trend toward more working hours is an about-face from the post-World War II pattern.

Explanations vary, but some suggest that the rush of women into the workplace in recent years, meager wage gains, America’s traditional work ethic, employee benefit policies and a weak labor movement have all played a role.

What’s more, U.S. women face a particular time squeeze. Women in Spain, Ireland, Italy and the Netherlands were much less likely to hold outside jobs than their U.S. counterparts. Women in Scandinavia may participate in the work force in greater numbers, but the jobs are more likely to be part-time.

When you throw it all together--adding up work inside and outside the home--”American women have the highest total working time,” said Schor, author of “The Overworked American.”

U.S. vs. the World: How Life in America Measures Up

We are rich, we are poor, we are healthy, we are sick. The United States in 1993 is a hodgepodge of contradictions. Here’s how we stack up against selected countries in the rest of the Western world on our “standard of life.”

WHAT PEOPLE HAVE Percentage of households with each item in 1991:

Home Answering Food VCR computer Microwave machine CD player processor U.S. 69% 27% 84% 35% 22% 49% Japan 67 27 70 10* 34 na W.Germany 42 16 36 na 24 49 France 35 14 25 na 23 56

*1992 figure na=not available

SATISFACTION

Life Satisfaction Happiness Overall Index Iceland 82 95 89 Sweden 80 92 86 Netherlands 82 88 85 Denmark 81 88 85 N. Ireland 78 86 82 Norway 74 88 81 Ireland 74 86 80 United States 73 80 77 Belgium 72 82 77 Finland 71 80 76

HEALTH AND WELL-BEING Health care spending as percentage of economy, 1991: U.S.: 13.4% Canada: 10.0 France: 9.1 Finland: 8.9 Sweden: 8.6 Australia: 8.6 Germany: 8.5 Austria: 8.4 Iceland: 8.4 Italy: 8.3 Netherlands: 8.3

INFANT MORTALITY Deaths per 1,000 live births, 1990: Japan: 5 Finland: 6 Sweden: 6 Canada: 7 Germany: 7 Hong Kong: 7 Netherlands: 7 Switzerland:: 7 Australia: 8 Austria: 8 Belgium: 8 Denmark: 8 France: 8 Ireland: 8 Norway: 8 Singapore: 8 Spain: 8 Britain:: 8 Italy: 9 United States: 9

LIFE EXPECTANCY Calculated from birth, selected countries (most recent estimates) Japan: 78.8 Iceland: 78.0 Switzerland: 78.0 Sweden: 77.6 Canada: 77.4 Netherlands: 77.1 France: 76.8 Australia: 76.7 Germany: 76.2 United States: 76.0

WEALTH Standard of living rated among the seven major industrial democracies (gross domestic product per capita, 1991): U.S.: 100.0 Germany: 87.2 Canada: 87.1 Japan: 85.8 France: 82.7 Italy: 76.4 Britain: 72.5

LEISURE TIME Paid holidays in each nation: Germany: 40 Belgium: 38.5 Austria: 38 Spain: 38 Luxembourg: 37 France: 36.5 Sweden: 36 Greece: 35 Italy: 33.5 U.S.: 20

SHARING THE RICHES Share of income for each fifth of U.S. families, 1950 to 1990:

Lowest Highest fifth second third fourth fifth 1950 4.5% 12.0% 17.4% 23.4% 42.7% 1960 4.8 12.2 17.8 24.0 41.3 1970 5.5 12.2 17.6 23.8 40.9 1980 5.2 11.5 17.5 24.3 41.5 1990 4.6 10.8 16.6 23.8 44.3

Sources: UNICEF, Children’s Defense Fund; Appliance magazine; Electronic Industries Assn.; Euromonitor; Electronic Industries Assn. of Japan; 1990-1991 World Values Survey, University of Michigan political scientist Ronald F. Inglehart; Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development; The World Bank; Council on Competitiveness; U.S. Department of Commerce