In which country should you put your suitcases in 2017? In Denmark, if one is to believe study of The Social Progress Imperative, led by Michael E. Porter, professor at Harvard and Scott Stern, professor at MIT. To raise Denmark to the top of this ranking, these two specialists compared 128 countries based on 50 criteria such as education, health, social inclusion, freedom of expression, internet access, environmental quality and even safety.
Scandinavian countries at the top of the ranking
The observation is clear: in Denmark more than elsewhere, life is good. Its strengths? Access to information and communications, affordable housing and freedom of expression. The other Scandinavian countries also offer a good quality of life: Finland takes second place in the ranking, Iceland and Norway share the third step of the podium, while Sweden comes in eighth position. “These countries excel in meeting basic human needs, providing a basis for well-being through education and environmental protection, creating opportunities for citizens to make personal choices and to express their full potential” , specifies the study. These results are hardly surprising since Denmark has appeared in the top 3 of the World Happiness Report for several years.
What about France? 18th in this ranking, it is placed behind the United States, Spain and Belgium. While France scores well in terms of access to basic knowledge, environmental quality or nutrition and medical care, its results in terms of social inclusion and even security are lower. But France is not the only one to have room for improvement: despite its first place, Denmark shows less recent improvements than its Scandinavian neighbors, a probable sign of long-standing general well-being, the study said. .
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