Finland, apparently, is the best country in the world to live in. This is good for Allen Hall, the seminary where I work. Last year we welcomed our first ever Finnish seminarian, from the Diocese of Helsinki. So there is some kind of reflected glory shining about the community. This has to be good for vocations…
Here are some passages from the Newsweek article by Tara A. Lewis:
With such a huge range of nations in the world, the question of whether there is a best place to live seems both simple and elusive. With that idea in mind, NEWSWEEK offers this list of best countries. Given that there are so many ways to measure achievement, we chose the five we felt were most important—health, economic dynamism (the openness of a country’s economy and the breadth of its corporate sector), education, political environment, and quality of life. And because it’s easier to improve quality of life if you’re tiny and rich like, for example, Finland, the list also accounts for income and size with rankings by subcategories. Like all lists, this one is not perfect, but it offers surprising and fascinating answers and plenty of insight into which country is healthiest, why Scandinavian nations always come out on top, and why the title of best country has more than one winner.
Despite the long winter, Finland is a pretty great place to be—the best, actually. It ranked the highest overall and also comes in as the best small country, the best high-income country, and the best country for education. Its students scored first in science and second in both reading and math in the 2006 (the most recent one for which data are available) Program for International Student Assessment, a test of 15-year-olds’ education skills by the OECD. Finland’s schoolkids enjoy a laid-back and inclusive learning environment where shoes are optional, all teachers have master’s degrees, and extra help is the norm: every year about one in three students gets individual time with a tutor.
With a relatively low unemployment rate—5.6 percent in 2009—and an economy that’s one of the healthiest even during the global recession, Australia has a lot more to offer than just beaches and Hugh Jackman. In the overall index, Australia ranks fourth. In the other categories for medium-size countries, it claims the top spot for political environment and ties Spain for best health care. With its high standard of living, safe cities, sunny climate, and outdoorsy citizens, Australia also has the best quality of life among medium-size countries.
The innovative country that brought the world sushi, Nintendo, and the Kyoto Protocol is also the one with the most healthy citizens. The average person in Japan lives to the age of 82; the average woman lives to be nearly 86. (Japanese women are the longest-living women in the world.) What explains their longevity? No one knows for sure, but it’s likely a combination of preventive medicine, diet, health education, high standard of living during old age, and universal health care. Japan also ranks first among large countries in education and fourth in quality of life.
And Albania gets an honourable mention:
Albania rarely makes headlines and seems an unlikely model for other countries, but this new democracy actually outperforms all other low-income countries. Among the nations in its category, it consistently ranks highest in education, health, and quality of life. Nearly 99 percent of Albanians are literate. Despite being a citizen of one of the poorest countries in Europe, the average Albanian can expect to live to be 78, the average Albanian woman to be 81—a pretty good statistic, considering that the average citizen of wealthy Germany will live only until age 79.
This is just so interesting. Up until fairly recently the western medical scientific model of health has been the absence of disease or illness. In this sense health is a negative term, defined by disease/illness being absent. This view of health has been very influential, and underpins the training and ethos of a wide range of health professionals.
The world Health Organization produces a more positive definition of health. “A state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing, not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”. The holistic approach is now being adopted more and more in our N.H.S.
The Social and environmental make up the broader dimensions of health which affect the individual. The individuals dimensions of health are made up of physical, emotional, mental, social, sexual and spiritual determinates.
I wonder how these countries compare in spiritual contentment and how this is fulfilling to their overall happiness health and wellbeing ?
It makes me proud of my Finnish heritage! My grandparents immigrated to America as young adults, to find a better life? Perhaps the family would have been better off staying in Finland! It is nice to read news about programs that are working, especially related to education and health care.
So Finland is the place to be according to the statistics! In my more morose moments, I fondly think of foreign places which must be better than the place where I am at the moment. In my more rational moments – which far outweigh the morose ones, I should add, I content myself with the notion that such thoughts are a part of the human condition. So many people, in my experience, wish they were somewhere, someone or something else when they hit a rough patch in their lives.
I think it is a question of making the very best of our lives where we are and who we are and, at the same time, helping others to do the same because, as I unserstand it (please correct me if I’m wrong Father Stephen), as Christians, we have a duty to do so for others.