The 16 healthiest countries in the world
Get the Full StoryJoe Raedle Getty ImagesThe United States lags far behind the 10 healthiest countries in the world.
Each year, the World Economic Forum releases its Global Competitiveness Report on the state of the world's economies. The WEF compares countries based on analyses of 12 factors, including infrastructure, innovations, and financial systems.
One of the factors the WEF considers in its assessment of a country's human capital is how healthy citizens are. To measure this, nations are compared based on estimates of how many years a person can expect to be in good health. The WEF calls this healthy life expectancy — a measure that combines mortality numbers with health status data.
According to the 2018 report,which was released Tuesday, the US came in 47th place out of 140 entries when it comes to health.
Americans have a healthy life expectancy of 67.7 years, the report said. But many other nations do better than that. Below are the 16 countries at top of the health ranking.16. Malta has a long history of quality healthcare. The country, which has moved up in the health ranking since last year when it came in 23rd , has a healthy life expectancy of 70.9 years.
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15. Austria spends about 7 of its GDP on healthcare, according to the Austrian Embassy in Washington, DC. The healthy life expectancy there is 70.9 years.
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14. The wealthy nation of Luxembourg has fallen a few spots from last year's sixth-place ranking. Its healthy life expectancy is currently 71 years.
REUTERS Wolfgang Rattay
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