Survey Determines The Best Country To Raise A Family – How Does Your Home Match Up?

If you’re looking to start a family, it appears that the Arctic nations of the world are among the best countries to raise a child, according to a newly released international survey.

This year’s Best Countries to Raise Kids report is based on data from the overall 2020 Best Countries Report, a global perception-based survey now in its fifth year. The report covers how nations are perceived based on a “number of qualitative characteristics” and scores and ranks countries using a model developed by the BAV Group and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in consultation with US News & World Report. More than 20,000 “engaged citizens” from across the dozens of countries were surveyed on 65 country attributes for the report covering adventure, citizenship, cultural influence, entrepreneurship, heritage, movers, open for business, power, and quality of life. (You can learn more about how the survey was conducted here.)

“The Best Countries project is designed to help citizens, business leaders and policymakers better understand how their nations are perceived on a world scale,” reads a supplement to the report. “The data behind the rankings can help determine the current and future possibilities of economic, political and cultural success in a nation and can be used as a strategic decision-making tool for citizens, business leaders, and governments to better evaluate their countries.”

Respondents were asked to share their perceptions of 73 nations, which were then scored individually and separated into nine thematic groupings, add the researchers. Weight was given to nine sub-rankings based on how that factor correlated with gross domestic product (GDP) per capita purchasing power.

When it comes to measuring the best place to raise a child, the ranking pulled from eight categories: being considered family-friendly, caring about human rights, having gender equality, being seen as happy, having income equality, being safe, and having well-developed public education and health care systems. It is important to note that the report does not include a readily available section highlighting limitations associated with such surveys.