A QUARTER of a century ago, The World in 1988 light-
heartedly ranked 50 countries according to where
would be the best place to be born. Then, America
came top (see chart on left). Now the Economist
Intelligence Unit has more earnestly calculated where
would be best to be born in 2013. Its quality-of-life
index links the results of subjective life-satisfaction
surveys—how happy people say they are—to objective
determinants of the quality of life across countries.
Being rich helps more than anything else, but it is not
all that counts—things like crime and trust in public
institutions matter too. In all, the index takes 11
indicators into account. Some are fixed, such as
geography; others change only very slowly over time
(demography, social and cultural characteristics).

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2013/01/daily-chart?fsrc=scn/fb/te/bl/ed/birthright