The Best Country in the World

Every once and a while I hear the claim that the United States is the greatest country in the world. With America being very much a pioneer in important concepts such as democracy and freedom, on the surface it seems totally plausible. If you examined every country in the world, the US is definitely in one of the top tiers. There's a relatively high degree of personal wealth, democracy and freedom, and other great things like world-leading music and film industries. Then there's the notion of American exceptionalism and the presumed idea that the US could be a "shining city on a hill." As a kid, I guess I would have presumed that this nation of 313,000,000¹ people really was number one. As I got older, though, I became more and more aware of the problems this country faces that might mean that we're not number one after all.

Nowadays, for better or for worse, I can name a whole host of problems the US faces. We have a terrible health care system that places too much power in the hands of greedy insurance companies (although I think we've made some marked improvements with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act), our education system is out of date and causing us to fall behind other nations, university tuition is horrendously high, two party partisan politics is affecting the workings of the federal government to an alarming degree, huge banking companies make reckless decisions that hurt their customers, there is an obesity epidemic, and we're addicted to oil. It's not like other industrialized and post-industrialized countries aren't faced with similar issues, but the US seems to be suffering from them to a higher degree and the fact that we don't do much to change them is not a good sign. If we want to live up to American exceptionalism and truly be the greatest country in the world, we have to step it up. If we want to properly dominate the national stage in economics, foreign relations, influence, and even sports, we should attend to these issues.

So if the United States isn't up to being the best country in the world, what country is? The thought of somehow calculating this seemed nigh impossible to me. There were too many variables and I figured I could only ever guess. Switzerland seemed like a pretty swell place. Maybe they were the best overall. Or could it be the Swedish? Lately, however, I decided that I'd like to give the calculation a try. I choose seven variables that I thought constituted the most important aspects of a country that could make it great. Although some of these aspects may be a bit more important than others, I weighed them equally when I took the average. I found a ranking system for each of the following variables to make the calculation:

   Happiness: From Forbes.com I found a Gallop World Poll that surveyed 155 countries from 2005 to 2009. A country can't be great if its people are unhappy.
   Environmentally Friendly: From Facebook I found Columbia and Yale's Environmental Performance Index that ranked 165 countries. Originally I was going for environmentally clean countries, but I had to settle for environmentally friendly instead (which should logically lead to a clean environment). It's important for a country to not be polluted (or polluting the rest of the planet).
   Income: From Wikipedia² I found the Atlas Method's 2010 list of countries by gross national income per capita. It's not good if a nation's citizens are living in poverty.
   Democracy: From Wikipedia I found the Economist Intelligent Unit's Democracy Index that assessed 167 countries in 2011. A nation's freedoms, the enactment of the will of its citizens, and its government's accountability are more likely in a more democratic society. The more democratic, the less corruption there should be.
   Homicide Rate: From Wikipedia I found the results of several studies on intentional homicide rate in the '00s decade (the '10s list wasn't very comprehensive). Originally I was going for just a general crime rate, but I had to settle for intentional homicide. Obviously if a country's going to be great, it will have a low rate of its people intentionally killing each other.
   Health Care: From Geographic.org I found the World Health Organization's ranking of the world's health systems from 2000 (unfortunately they stopped making this list after 2000). A good country's citizens should have easy access to a high standard of affordable health care.
   Education: From The Guardian I found the results of a study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that looked at numeracy, literacy, and science from 2009. If a country's going to be great, it has to be educating it's students well in order to maintain a creative, intelligent, and innovative society.

As stated above, there are more variables that great countries should have, but I think many, if not all, of these extra variables should come out of a society that excels in these seven categories. Although I kind of wanted to, I didn't include climate (that's way to subjective). And obviously, this will not be a perfect calculation; not all of the lists are up-to-date and a more thorough analysis would probably give better results.

Here is my list of the fifteen greatest countries in the world (the average rank from the lists above in parentheses):

1. Norway (7.0)
2. Switzerland (9.1)
3. Sweden (12.6)
4. Austria (13.0)
5. Iceland (14.1)
6. Netherlands (16.4)
7. Denmark (17.0)
8. Finland (18.1)
9. United Kingdom (18.9)
10. Germany (18.9)³
11. France (21.1)
12. Malta (21.7)⁴
13. Australia (22.7)
14. New Zealand (23.1)
15. Japan (23.4)

The most blatant conclusion is that Europe is home to the greatest countries in the world (the top twelve, in fact). More specifically, the Nordic countries dominate, with their nations coming in at one, three, five, seven, and eight. Europe's generally progressive mentality is almost surely the most important factor that led to their domination of this list. Their lives seem to be quite happy (of the Nordic countries, Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden went one, two, three, and four, respectively), they care more for the environment, and their citizens have a higher per capita income. Once a continent ruled by monarchs, they are now the most democratic on average and have superior health care and education systems.

So the Norwegians appear to make up the best country on Earth. They ranked third in happiness, fifth in environmental friendliness, fourth for income, first in democracy (9.8 out of a perfect 10), sixth in lowest intentional homicide rate, eleventh for their health care system, and nineteenth for their education scores. If extraterrestrials were to come to Earth asking for the best place to stay, I'd have to tell them to embrace the snow and go to Norway. Who knew the Vikings would have such progressive ancestors?

Now that we've seen how well Europe's done, where does the USA rank in the world's greatest countries? Of the 196 countries in the world, the United States wound up 25^th, still in the top 12.8%. That's not bad, but it's still not good enough for Americans to claim the title of Best Country in the World. Canada, the first North American country, comes in at sixteenth.

There were some interesting trends I found with the results. Of the top countries that have the highest percentage of atheists and agnostics, nine of the top fifteen are part of my above list. All but one of the countries on my list have universal health care (Norway, unsurprisingly, was the first back in 1912). Five of the ten countries that nationally recognize same-sex marriage are also in the top sixteen of the list.

A comprehensive examination of the best countries in the world would be very long and difficult process. Although my research isn't quite at that level (admittedly, most of it only took one night to compile and analyze), I think it gives a pretty good idea of the best country in the world and it's close competitors.

¹ Back then it would have been under 300 million, but whatever.
² Yeah I know it's Wikipedia and all, but I made sure the articles I used had reputable citations or references. You can also read this if you're still concerned.
³ To break the tie between the UK and Germany, I gave the one with the better happiness ranking the better spot (the UK happier at 17 to 33). I arbitrarily chose happiness as the tie-breaking variable. God save the Queen.
⁴ I couldn't get an education score for Malta, so when I found their average rank I had to ignore education and divide by six instead of seven.