Newsweek ranks Finland as ”best country in the world”

Well, there ya go. According to the good people at Newsweek, and who are we to dispute their findings, Finland is officially the best country in the world.
      Newsweek ranked a hundred of the world's roughly 200 sovereign nations according to a clutch of parameters linked to health, education, quality of life, economic dynamism, and political environment, and this doughty pine & lakes republic of 5.3 million souls came out on top of the heap, in spite of the long winter, high taxes, and widespread worries over public services.
      Newsweek's listing sought to resolve the thorny question of which corner of the planet would offer someone born today the best shot at living a “healthy, secure, reasonably prosperous, and upwardly mobile life”.
     
The magazine reports that their efforts took them several months and involved input from a panel of American researchers in different fields.
      Finland was ranked at #1, at the head of a top ten of Switzerland, Sweden, Australia, Luxembourg, Norway, Canada, The Netherlands, Japan, and Denmark.
      In other words, the “small and rich” Scandinavian bloc once again showed its muscle, even if little Iceland got left off the list for some reason.
      Across the Gulf of Finland, Estonia ranked at 32nd, mainly through its good results (7th place) in education. Our other neighbours in Russia did not fare as well - 51st.
     
More specifically, Finland won the education stakes outright (with a perfect score of 100), and was also voted ”best small country” and “best high-income country”.
      In terms of quality of life, we placed fourth (behind winners Norway but ahead of the Swedes), while Finland's political environment was considered worthy of 5th spot (this time the Swedes took top honours).
      In economic dynamism we are apparently eighth-best in a list headed by Singapore and the United States, while health needs a bit of brushing up, as here Finland could do no better than 17th in a race won by Japan.
     
The United States ended up just outside the Top 10 in 11th, pulled down by low rankings for education and health.
      The UK (14th overall) was hampered by a poor showing in the political environment department, where it came only 33rd.
     
As always in these assays, the devil is in the details and particularly in the methodology, and we should not get too carried away with the results, although it is probably better all round (and not just for self-esteem reasons) to be near the top rather than near the bottom, in the company of Cameroon, Nigeria, and Burkina Faso, which propped up the Newsweek list.
      Certainly Minister for Foreign Affairs Alexander Stubb (National Coalition Party), who earlier established a "branding working group" to create a new Suomi-brand for the country, was delighted by the U.S. magazine's recognition. Stubb pointed out that Finland has in the past been at the top of the World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness tables, has consistently beaten off all comers in the OECD's PISA rankings for secondary education, and - according to one international survey - we have even been deemed "World's Happiest Country" alongside Denmark.
     
Finland did on the other hand come only 12th in the latest UN Human Development Index rankings (2009), and we have been slipping somewhat on the Corruption Perception Index lately, so we do still have some room for improvement.
      And judging by the generally sceptical tone of the posts in the discussion forum attached to the Finnish parent newspaper's online article about the Newsweek list, a good many Finns recognise this all too well.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  A cautionary note from 2006 (31.10.2006)

Links:
  Newsweek: An Interactive Infographic of the World´s Best Countries
  Newsweek: Best Countries in the World
  Human Development Index (Wikipedia)
  Forbes: Happiest Countries in the World
  OECD PISA League Tables (Wikipedia)
  World Economic Forum: Global Competitiveness Report