Expectant parents may want to consider moving to
Scandinavia, as a new report has revealed Denmark, Sweden and Norway top the
list of best countries in the world for raising a child.
The findings are according to the annual Best Countries
Report, conducted by US News & World Report and the Wharton School of the
University of Pennsylvania, which point to the Scandinavian countries’
“generous paternal and maternal leave” and free preschool.
“These countries tend to have generous paternal leave and
maternal leave, offer free preschool, and have good overall public education
systems,” Deidre McPhillips, senior data editor at US News & World report,
told CNN.
Rounding out the top five countries on this year's list are
Canada and the Netherlands, in fourth and fifth place respectively, while
Finland, Switzerland, New Zealand, Australia and Austria were also named in the
top 10.
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| Best countries in the world to raise a child |
The UK came in at number 11, with high marks for public
education and healthcare, but a 2.5 rating when it came to income equality and
7.1 family-friendly rating.
Brexit also impacted the country’s overall score, with the
report explaining: “The year 2017 ushered in anxiety about the country’s role
on the global stage, due to the public voting in the summer of 2016 to leave
the European Union."
The US, which was named first in education in this year’s
report, was ranked 18th when it comes to raising children.
According to the analysts, the low score is largely
attributed to the country’s “safety metric”.
“In that attribute, the US actually ranks 32, pretty far
down the list,” McPhillips said. “So that really impacts its ratings for
raising kids, of course.”
To rank the best countries in the world for raising
children, the report drew from a “global perceptions-based survey” and ranked
countries based on eight attributes including: caring about human rights, being
considered family-friendly, its environment for gender equality, being seen as
happy, having income equality, being safe, and having well-developed public
education and well-developed health care systems.
For the overall report, which has been released every year
since 2016, 73 nations across 65 different metrics were evaluated through a
survey of more than 20,000 people in the Americas, Asia, Europe, the Middle
East and Africa.
To get an accurate representation, survey respondents were
split into different groups which included leaders in business,
university-educated people who consider themselves middle-class or higher and
read the news four days a week, and the general public, aged over 18.
The overall report named Switzerland the best country in the
world, for the fourth year in a row, followed by Canada, Japan, Germany and
Australia.
For the report, which lists the UK in sixth place and the US
in seventh, it looked at factors such as “economic influence and military to
education and quality of life”.
In addition to the best place to raise a child, this year’s
report has also been broken down into sub-rankings of the best countries in
regards to adventure, cultural influence, power, and quality of life.
The 20 best countries for raising a child are below:
1. Denmark
2. Sweden
3. Norway
4. Canada
5. Netherlands
6. Finland
7. Switzerland
8. New Zealand
9. Australia
10. Austria
11. United Kingdom
12. Luxembourg
13. Germany
14. France
15. Spain
16. Italy
17. Portugal
18. United States
19. Japan
20. Poland
Source: Usnews
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