Canada Ranked #1 Country In The World In 2021
We scored the top spot in "Quality of Life" and "Social Purpose," too.
It looks like our country gained some serious bragging rights this year according to the 2021 "Best Countries in the World" U.S. News report, where Canada ranked number one overall.
And while we may have won the gold medal this time around, we didn't do too badly on the last five years' rankings either.
Canada scored second place in U.S. News' Best Countries reports in 2016, 2017 and 2018, then fell to third place in 2019, moved back up to second in 2020, and now we're right on top.
This year's report was based on a survey of over 17,000 people from across the world, where participants were presented with 76 attributes and were asked how strongly they associated each one with a nation. 78 countries were included in this year's rankings.
And as for the rest of the best in 2021, here's the list of the top 20:
- Canada
- Japan
- Germany
- Switzerland
- Australia
- United States
- New Zealand
- United Kingdom
- Sweden
- Netherlands
- France
- Denmark
- Norway
- Singapore
- South Korea
- Italy
- China
- Finland
- Spain
- Belgium
And while being considered the number one country in the world is definitely something to boast about, we've got two other top places in sub-rankings from the same survey to be proud of this year: Best Countries for Quality of Life and Best Countries for Social Purpose.
Our country got first place in the quality of life category due to respondents ranking us as "No. 1 for having a good job market, No. 2 for being politically stable and No. 3 for having a well-developed public education system."
Canada's held the number one spot in this sub-ranking for six consecutive years now, so it seems like people — at least the ones who respond to the yearly surveys that U.S. News bases its annual reports on — are rather content with the standard of living in the Great White North.
And when it comes to winning this year's top spot in "Best Countries for Social Purpose," U.S. News reported that survey participants view Canada as having been committed to social justice and human rights in 2021, as well as having well-distributed political power.
It was quite a successful year in rankings for Canada!
This article's cover image was used for illustrative purposes only.
