UN: Iceland Best Place to Live

Iceland has inched out longtime champ Norway as the best place in the world to live, and sub-Saharan Africa is the worst. The UN list, out today, ranks countries by real per-capita GDP, education, and life expectancy. The US ranked 12th, down from 8th last year, as relatively low life expectancy offset the world’s second-highest per-capita GDP, Reuters reports.

UN officials downplayed small shifts, like the US drop, because some data is imperfect. The bottom 22 countries are all in sub-Saharan Africa, where AIDS has ravaged life expectancy. In 10 of those nations, two in five die before reaching age 40. In bottom-ranked Sierra Leone, per-capita GDP is 45 times lower than in Iceland. (More United Nations stories.)