The best country of 2009

Where will be the best place on Earth?

ENOUGH of the gloom: the list of candidates you have nominated as worthy of the dubious distinction of being the world's worst country in the year ahead is depressingly long.

Let's turn to the other end of the spectrum. Which will be the world's best country in 2009? Bhutan prefers gross national happiness to gross national income. The problem is how to measure it.

The World in 2005 asked the question: which would be the best place to live in 2005? The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) devised an ingenious model for measuring and comparing the quality of life in different countries. Its worldwide quality-of-life index looked at the factors that people say in life-satisfaction surveys affect their sense of wellbeing: money matters, of course, but so do a number of other things, including, health, freedom, employment, and family and community life.

The EIU consulted its analysts, fed all their appraisals into the model, and—hey presto—it produced the answer. The best place on Earth in 2005 would be Ireland. (Many Irish disagreed.)

For 2009 Ireland, suffering recession and a property crash, would be an unlikely winner. And in any case, in the absence of the EIU's models and data, we'll have to rely on individual judgment—including on what the criteria should be.

However, it should involve more than just income per head (which would measure the richest country on earth). It might be a country that will set a particularly fine example, where improvement in the quality of life will be most striking, or which will be exerting a benign influence in its neighbourhood.

It may be tougher to think of nominations for the best country than for the worst. But let's give it a go.

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