U.S. News released “The 25 Best Countries in the World” for 2024, and the United States of America made it into the top three!
Following not far behind Switzerland in the number one spot for yet another year, the United States claimed third place.
Though we’d of course prefer the crown, when you’re being compared to countries across the world, fifth place is not too shabby. Not to mention, we jumped two spots since 2023, when the U.S. was in fifth place.
This is the ninth Best Countries rankings released by U.S. News. WPP and its proprietary BAV brand analytics tool, along with professor David Reibstein from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania are responsible for the study and model used to score each nation.
The 2024 study surveyed nearly 17,000 global citizens to reach its conclusions. 73 country attributes impacted the ranking, broken down into 10 thematic subrankings: adventure, agility, cultural influence, entrepreneurship, heritage, movers, open for business, power, quality of life and social purpose.
According to U.S. News, the 89 countries that made the cut had to qualify with the below criteria:
- Top 100 countries in terms of gross domestic product in any year from 2018 to 2022, based on World Bank data
- Top 100 countries in terms of foreign direct investment inflows in any year from 2018 to 2022, based on World Bank data
- Top 100 countries in terms of international tourism receipts or tourism arrivals in any year from 2018 to 2022, based on World Bank data
- Top 150 countries in the U.N.’s Human Development Index in any year from 2018 to 2022
Of the 10 subrankings, the United States ranked number one in power and agility. Overall, the United States got a score of 94.2, 5.8 points less than the number one country, Switzerland.
You can get a more in depth look at the analysis of our country here.
Japan came in second behind Switzerland, followed by Canada in fourth after the U.S., and Australia in fifth. Qatar came in at the bottom of the ranking at number 25.
See the entire ranking here.