Switzerland Tops U.S. News Best Countries Ranking 2017, US Drops to 7th Rank

Hitherto unranked Switzerland has made it to the top in U.S. News Best Countries Ranking 2017 that assessed 80 countries on various criteria including entrepreneurship, business opportunities and quality of life.

With an overall score of 10, Switzerland scored 9.7 in being Open for Business, 9.6 for Citizenship and 9.2 for Quality of Life.

Coming second is Canada, a position it has carried over from 2016. With an overall score of 9.7, the country notched up a perfect 10 in Quality of Life, 9.6 in Citizenship, 8.5in Open for Business and 8.4 for Entrepreneurship.

The United Kingdom maintained its 3^rd position from the previous year, with an overall score of 9.6. It scored 9 in Entrepreneurship, 8.6 in Power and 7.9 in Citizenship.

Singapore remained unchanged at 15^th rank while China slipped from 17^th to 20^th rank. The United Arab Emirates, previously unranked is 22^nd.  South Korea dropped from 19^th to 23^rd rank. India too slipped from 22 to 25th.

In the 4^th position is Germany, knocked down from its number 1 position in 2016, followed by Japan that climbed to the 5^th rank from the 7^th spot in the previous year.

Sweden was 6, one spot down from 2016, followed by the United States at number 7 (rank 4 in 2016), Australia at 8^th (rank 6 in 2016), France at 9 (8 in 2016) and Norway at 10 (unranked in 2016).

U.S. News said the 2017 Best Countries report and rankings are based on how global perceptions define countries in terms of a number of qualitative characteristics, impressions that have the potential to drive trade, travel and investment and directly affect national economies.

Eighty countries, up from 60 in the inaugural rankings, were measured in the report.

Singapore remained unchanged at 15^th rank while China slipped from 17^th to 20^th rank. The United Arab Emirates, previously unranked is 22^nd.  South Korea dropped from 19^th to 23^rd rank. India too slipped from 22 to 25th.

The study and model used to score and rank countries were developed by John Gerzema and Anna Blender of Y&R’s BAV Consulting, and Professor David J. Reibstein of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, in consultation with U.S. News & World Report.

The Report identified a set of 65 country attributes that can be used to describe a country and that are also relevant to the success of a modern nation.

In a survey of more than 21,000 people from across the globe, the participants were asked to assess how closely they associated an attribute with a nation.

These attributes were grouped into nine sub-rankings that rolled into the Best Countries ranking: Adventure, Citizenship, Cultural Influence, Entrepreneurship, Heritage, Movers, Open for Business, Power and Quality of Life.

To determine the weight each sub-ranking score had in the overall Best Countries score, each was correlated to 2014 gross domestic product purchasing power parity per capita, a measure of inclusive prosperity, as reported by the International Monetary Fund.

Sub-rankings that demonstrated a stronger relationship with the wealth metric were weighted more heavily, and all weights were standardized to total 100.