U.S. News & World Report might be based in the U.S., but they clearly have no home-field bias. In their first ever country rankings, the media company named Germany the world’s best country.
The list, created with WPP and The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, has Germany at the top. Canada comes in at No. 2, while the U.K. is at No. 3. The U.S. comes in fourth.
The rest of the Top 10 is Sweden, Australia, Japan, France, The Netherlands and Denmark.The highest-ranking Asian country is Singapore at No. 15. Brazil is the highest-ranking South American country at No. 20.
What makes Germany better than all these other countries, according to U.S. News? They point out that a recent Gallup poll noted that counties often look to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s leadership almost as much as they look to U.S. President Barack Obama. Germany’s unemployment rate is also below 5 percent, the lowest among European Union countries. Germany is also home to some of the best-known brands around the world, like BMW and Mercedes-Benz.
The country has also had a remarkably stable government under Merkel for over a decade. It has emerged as the leader of the EU, while France struggles with polarized politics and the U.K. continues to contemplate its place in the EU.
“Our results were analyzed in correlation with the per capita gross domestic purchasing power parity of each country,” David Rubenstein, a professor at the Wharton School, told the New York Daily News.