Norway is the Best Place for a Mother: Save The Children Annual Survey

Save The Children’s annual survey ranks Norway as the world’s best place to be a mother. The report rates 179 countries based on five indicators related to maternal health, education, income levels and the status of women and is the 16th annual Mothers’ Index.

Carolyn Miles, CEO of Save the Children said that the data confirmed a country’s economic wealth is not the sole factor leading to happy mothers, but that policies need to be put in place. Miles said that Norway invests wealth in the mother and child care as it is their top priority.

Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, the Scandinavian countries, have consistently taken the first spots in the Mothers’ Index. This year, Norway stole the spotlight from Finland, which held the top spot last year. Australia is the only non-European country, at number nine among the top ten countries. The United States ranks 33 behind Japan, Poland and Croatia.

The ten worst places are all sub-Saharan African countries, with Haiti tied with Sierra Leone for the 169th spot. Somalia ends the list, after the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic.

The rating considered infant mortality in the world’s 24 wealthiest capital cities and found that Washington had the highest rate at 7.9 deaths per 1,000. One mother out of 290 will lose a child before the age of five in the top 10 counties while one in 8 mothers will lose a child in the bottom 10 countries.

Save the Children also reported that mothers in the world’s expanding cities are having a tougher time, with survival gaps between rich and poor widening.

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The highest gap for child survival was in the cities in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Madagascar, Nigeria, Peru, Rwanda, Vietnam and Zimbabwe. Poor children were three to five times more likely to die than their affluent peers.

Source-Medindia