World’s Healthiest Countries

To identify the healthiest countries in the world, Bloomberg Rankings created health scores and health-risk scores for countries with populations of at least one million. Then subtracted the risk score from the health score to determine the country’s rank. Five- year averages, when available, were used to mitigate some of the short-term year-over-year swings.

Total health-score factors:

• Life expectancy at birth and infant mortality (10% of score)
• Causes of death: Communicative and non-communicative diseases, excluding war-related injuries (40% of score)
• Death rates by three age groups: less than 14, 15-64 and 65 and up (40% of score)
• Survival to 65 and life expectancy at 65, both gender-ratio weighted (10% of score)

Risk-score factors:

• % of population age 15+ who smoke any form of tobacco, including cigarettes, cigars and pipes, and excluding smokeless tobacco o Total (reported and estimated) adult (15+ years) per-capita consumption of alcohol
• % population ages 20+ overweight (Body Mass Index ≥ 25) and/or obese (BMI ≥ 30)
• % of population physically inactive (less than 30 minutes of moderate activity five times per week, or 20 minutes of vigorous activity three times per week)
• % population with raised total cholesterol (≥ 6.2 millimoles per liter)
• % population with raised blood pressure (systolic blood pressure≥140 or diastolic blood pressure≥90)
• % population with raised fasting blood glucose (≥ 7.0 mmol/L) or on medication for high glucose
• % population ages 15-49 infected with HIV
• Composite ranking of outdoor and indoor pollution, water safety and access to sanitation
• Composite ranking of immunized coverage for DTP, measles, hepatitis B, meningitis, tuberculosis & polio among 1-year-olds
• % of underweight children aged <5 years
• Lifetime risk of maternal death (the probability that a 15-year-old female will die eventually from a maternal cause)

Total risk penalty is the average risk score of all factors plus an adjustment factor, which takes income into consideration. Using World Bank guidelines, countries were divided into three income groups with specific health risks. For countries with gross national income per capita of more than $12,276, smoking, obesity/overweight, cholesterol level and blood pressure were overweighted. For countries with incomes of $1,006 to $12,275, high blood pressure, smoking, alcohol consumption and environmental factors were overweighted. And countries whose residents earn less than $1,005 were overweighted in prevalence of HIV, environmental factors, childhood underweight and maternal health. Adjustments were also made for countries that ranked worst in a risk factor that was outside of their income-group specific risks.

Countries with data for less than eight risk factors were excluded. Where only aggregate health statistics on China were provided, Bloomberg extrapolated Hong Kong-specific data from the HK SAR’s Department of Health and the Census and Statistics Department, and adjusted mainland-only China accordingly.