A Newsweek Magazine study of best countries in terms of health,education, economy, and politics ranked world's top 100 countries.

For this special survey, which has been published on the official Web siteof the Newsweek magazine, five categories of national well-being were chosen - education, health, quality of life, economic competitiveness,and political environment - and compiled metrics within these categories across 100 nations. A hundred countries that were ranked by the magazine were divided into three groups in terms of income and three groups in terms of population

Finland tops the list, with Switzerland and Sweden at number 2 and 3. The USA is 11th and the UK is 14th.

Ukraine has taken 49th place in the ranking of the world's best countries, and became the country with the best quality of life among low-income countries.

In the overall ranking, Ukraine was the world's 49th best country, between Brazil and Cuba, and two places above Russia. It was also seven places above Belarus, but behind all of the rest of its neighbors. The magazine ranked Poland 29th, Slovakia 31st, Hungary 33rd, and Romania 39th. Among the former Soviet republics, Kazakhstan is 61st in the table, Azerbaijan 69th, while EU member states Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania took 32nd, 34th and 36th places respectively. The world's top three countries include Finland, Switzerland and Sweden, while Cameroon, Nigeria and Burkina Faso are at the bottom of the table.

Among low-income countries, Ukraine was the first country according to five criteria, and among the countries with a medium-sized population it was tenth, between Argentina and Colombia. Ukraine has taken 49th place in the ranking of the world's best countries, which has been published on the official Web site of the Newsweek magazine, and became the country with the best quality of life among low-income countries.

This Newsweek Magazine's finding generally supports the findings of IT Sourcing Europe's latest study on Potential of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) as a Global Center of IT Outsourcing (ITO) 2010. During the study, the six CEE countries were assessed in terms of general macroeconomic environment, innovation, innovative business models, Intellectual Property (IP) security, costs of software development, implementation and maintenance and availability of IT resources. As a result, Ukraine ranked #1 and demonstrated the greatest potential among its neighbors (both the EU members and non-EU countries) of becoming Europe's Silicon Valley and most targeted ITO hub in the near future.

(The article is in part based on the publication in Outsourcing-Ukraine )