The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), a sister company of The Economist, has tried to measure which country will provide the best opportunities for a healthy, safe and prosperous life in the years ahead. Where do you think South Africa ranks?

Despite our presidential housing concerns, some of the worst levels of education on the planet, and disturbing levels of violence – especially against women – we managed to come 53rd out of the 80 countries examined. The top place to be born in 2013 is Switzerland, while the place you want to avoid at all costs is apparently Nigeria.

We will let the Economist explain how the rankings are figured:

Its quality-of-life index links the results of subjective life-satisfaction surveys—how happy people say they are—to objective determinants of the quality of life across countries. Being rich helps more than anything else, but it is not all that counts; things like crime, trust in public institutions and the health of family life matter too. In all, the index takes 11 statistically significant indicators into account. They are a mixed bunch: some are fixed factors, such as geography; others change only very slowly over time (demography, many social and cultural characteristics); and some factors depend on policies and the state of the world economy.

So again, it is a wonder how we managed to do so well. Here is the full list:

The Economist goes into a little more detail about its winners:

Small economies dominate the top ten. Half of these are European, but only one, the Netherlands, is from the euro zone. The Nordic countries shine, whereas the crisis-ridden south of Europe (Greece, Portugal and Spain) lags behind despite the advantage of a favourable climate. The largest European economies (Germany, France and Britain) do not do particularly well.

While the usefulness of such lists is debatable, this one has managed to create a context for an Orson Welles joke; its existance is therefore justified. In the film “The Third Man”, Orson Welles’s character, the rogue Harry Lime, famously says that Italy for 30 years had war, terror and murder under the Borgias but in that time produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance; Switzerland had 500 years of peace and democracy—and produced the cuckoo clock.

So while the top place to be born is Switzerland, you may miss out on the renaissance like futures of places like South Africa, Nigeria, and El Salvador.

[Source: The Economist]