Switzerland, Australia, Norway, Sweden — Not The USA

In “The lottery of life. Where to be born in 2013”, The Economist tells us what are the best countries to born in today. Switzerland is #1 and Australia is #2. USA is only #16. You will have to take a look at the criteria to find out why. But, I’ll go with any countries in the top 10. But, moving down the Economist list would you rather live in the UAE than in France or Italy? Yikes.

My primary take away is that, at least according to The Economist*, the USA isn’t the place to start out any more.

* The independent variables in the estimating equa­tion for 2006 include: material wellbeing as measured by GDP per head (in $, at 2006 constant PPPS); life expect­ancy at birth; the quality of family life, based primarily on divorce rates; the state of political freedoms; job se­curity (measured by the unemployment rate); climate (measured by two variables: the average deviation of minimum and maximum monthly temperatures from 14 degrees Celsius; and the number of months in the year with less than 30mm rainfall); personal physical security ratings (based primarily on recorded homicide rates and ratings for risk from crime and terrorism); quality of community life (based on membership in so­cial organisations); governance (measured by ratings for corruption); gender equality (measured by the share of seats in parliament held by women).