Best Country In The World? U.S. Falls Again In Rankings

The United States may be viewed as the most powerful country in the world, but as far as the best countries in the world it comes in eight place, according to U.S. News & World Report. The U.S. fell one spot from the 2017 rankings, where its number 7 ranking marked a three-spot drop from 2016.

The rankings, compiled by U.S. News, Y&R's BAV Group and the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business evaluate 80 countries across criteria like economic influence, citizenship and quality of life. Over 21,000 people from across the globe are asked in a survey to assess how closely they view an attribute with a country.

This year's survey also asked respondents their opinions of prominent world leaders. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and German Chancellor Angela Merkel were viewed as the most respected globally. Russian President Vladmir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump saw the highest disapproval ratings, according to U.S. News.

According to the rankings, these are 10 best countries in the world:

1. Switzerland
2. Canada
3. Germany
4. United Kingdom
5. Japan
6. Sweden
7. Australia
8. United States
9. France
10. Netherlands

The rankings evaluate 65 total attributes, asking respondents how closely they associated a country with a certain attribute. Every country was scored on each of the attributes.

"The more a country was perceived to exemplify a certain characteristic in relation to the average, the higher that country's attribute score and vice versa," U.S. News explains. "These scores were normalized to account for outliers and transformed into a scale that could be compared across the board."

U.S. News grouped the attributes into nine subrankings, which were given scores by averaging the scores each attribute in a particular subranking received. The subrankings were then given weights.

Here's how the U.S. ranked in each of the subrankings:

Adventure: Not ranked

Most Business Friendly: Not ranked

Cultural Influence: 3

Citizenship (Most modern): 16

Entrepreneurship: 3

Quality of life: 17

Power: 1

Heritage (richest traditions): Not ranked

Up and coming economies: Not ranked

Click here to read more about the rankings and the methodology.

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images News/Getty Images