Where to born?

Warren Buffet, the 3rd richest person in the world (with 84 billion dollars of net worth), and the man who was called the most influential person in the world by Time Magazine in 2012, said that all the good things that had happened to him in his life can be traced back to the fact that he was born in the right time in the right country.

The Economist (a world leader economic weekly magazine) published the list of places „Where to be born” twice – first in 1988, and then in 2013 for the second time. Australia took the 2nd place in the world after Switzerland based on the 2013 list.

When preaparing the list, several objective aspects were considered ( geographical location, GDP per capita, cost of living, demographic situation, life expectancy at birth, the rate of literacy etc.). The Economist considered such subjective, but still measurable and significant factors as well like how boring life is in the given country or how developed their cultural life is etc.

The 2nd place, which was awarded to Australia in the recent list, is a really surprising fact that deserves more attention because this country was on the 18th place together with Finnland and New Zealand in 1988 when The Economist published its first list. By 2013 New Zealand climbed to the 7th place while Finnland to the 11th, but they still far lags behind the enormous development Australia went through during this period.

We would like to highlight some countries both from the 1988 and the 2013 list published by The Economist.

Countries Rank in 2013 Rank in 1998
Switzerland 1. 13.
Australia 2. 18.
Norway 3. 13.
The Netherlands 8. 10.
Canada 9. 5.
Germany 16. 3. (West-Germany)
United States of America 16. 1.
Italy 21. 4.
Japan 25. 6.
French 26. 2.
Great-Britain 27. 7.
Greece 34. 27.
Hungary 46. 24.

Everyone can draw their own conclusions when looking at the list above. We only presented it as something that deserves attention as we believe it is interesting to see how much the situation of countries of the world changed in 25 years.