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BY EVELYN LEOPOLD
REUTERS
UNITED NATIONS - Norway, Iceland, Sweden, Australia and the Netherlands ranked as the best countries in which to live in the 2003 U.N. Human Development report Tuesday, but people in once top-ranked Canada were miffed.
The United States ranked seventh and Canada was eighth in the report that seeks to go beyond per-capita income and include such factors as educational levels, health care and life expectancy in measuring a nation's well-being.
The report also gives a separate index for women's participation in political and economic fields, with surprising results. It says women fare better in Botswana, Costa Rica and Namibia than in Greece, Italy and Japan.
Canada, which had been in first place in the overall index of 175 countries for seven years until 2001, conducted its own poll, apparently timed to the U.N. report. Last year, Canada slipped to third place.
Canadian media reported that 89 percent of the country had an ``absolute conviction that we have a better quality of life than the United States.''
Mark Malloch Brown, head of the U.N. Development Program that produces the index, said there was little difference among the 10 top-rated nations. The change in Canada's status was due to new methods of calculating educational standards.
The overall index shows a decline in ranking among 21 nations over the 1990s. For example, South Africa, now in 111th place, fell 28 ranks from 1990 because more people died younger from AIDS-related illnesses.
China and India exhibited steady growth among developing countries in the 1990s, now ranking in 104th place and 127th place, respectively.
Roughly half the countries in Latin America and the Caribbean recorded either a decline or stagnation in income during the 1990s. In Eastern Europe and Central Asia, per-capita income also fell, with steep drops in Russia, Moldova, Tajikistan and Ukraine.
The top-ranked nations were: Norway, Iceland, Sweden, Australia, Netherlands, Belgium, United States, Canada, Japan, Switzerland, Denmark, Ireland, Britain, Finland, Luxembourg, Austria, France, Germany, Spain and New Zealand.
Those with low development rankings, from 156th to 175th place, were: Senegal, Guinea, Rwanda, Benin, Tanzania, Ivory Coast, Malawi, Zambia, Angola, Chad, Guinea-Bissau, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Burundi, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Sierra Leone.
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