Neither the Customary system nor the Metric system has an official unit of measurement for goodness. But that didn’t stop the United Nations from quantifying the quality on the international scale. As reported by Business Insider, an official power ranking of “goodness” does, in fact, exist.
The so-called “Good Country Index” judges countries based on their positive contributions to the global community. The index is based on seven different categories: Health & Wellbeing, World Order, International Peace & Security, Culture, Planet & Climate, Science & Technology, and Prosperity & Equality. These seven categories are, in turn, determined by 35 different sub-categories. When all these factors were taken into account, one country came out on top: Sweden.
“Sweden must be bored of coming top in every bloody country index but that’s the fact of the matter,” Simon Anholt, an independent policy advisor and the Index’s creator, told The Local. “The European model is one that trained countries to be much more outward looking, and Sweden is that more than the others.”
Sure enough, the Index’s top ten was very European-heavy:
Sweden
Denmark
Netherlands
United Kingdom
Switzerland
Germany
Finland
France
Austria
Canada
