What are the best and worst countries for mothers? If you have children or are planning to have children once you move abroad, you should know about a new study by the Save the Children organization in London. The organization’s fourteenth annual “State of the World’s Mothers 2013″ report was released just a few weeks ago. The report assesses the conditions for the well-being of mothers in 186 countries based on data from the United Nations and other global sources.
With an introduction by Melinda Gates of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the report focuses on the safest and most dangerous places in the world to be born. Five different metrics were used: 1) risk of maternal death, 2) infant mortality rate, 3) the number of years an average child will spend in school, 4) gross national income per capita and, 5) participation of women in government.
Prosperous and egalitarian Scandinavian countries Finland, Sweden and Norway lead the rankings this year, followed by Iceland, the Netherlands, Denmark, Spain, Belgium, Germany and Austria. The top 10 countries, in general, attained very high scores for the health of both mothers and children and educational, economic and political status.
Finland had strong performance across all five dimensions of maternal and child health and well-being. Although Finland did not perform the best overall on any one indicator, it’s the only country to place in the top 12 on all five indicators.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo ranked last among the countries surveyed. The 10 bottom-ranked countries – all from sub-Saharan Africa – performed poorly on all indicators. Other bottom 10 countries were Cote d’Ivoire, Chad, Nigeria, Gambia, Central African Republic, Niger, Mali, Sierra Leone, Somalia.
Btw, the United States ranked just thirtieth in the study.
