Bhartiya No. 1 (Nationalist) 08 May 2011

Best & worst places to be a mother: Norway is the best, Afghanistan is the worst

With Mother's Day just around the corner, it looks like Norwegian moms may have the most to celebrate.

Norway has been named the best place to be a mom by the Save the Children organization, which just released its annual 2011 State of the World's Mothers report.

The list ranks 164 countries based on how they size up when it comes to education, health care, politics and opportunity.

Of the 43 developed nations included in the report, the United States ranked 31st, falling three spots from last year.

One reason for the drop?

American mothers have the highest maternal mortality rate of any industrialized nation in the world, with one in 2,100 women dying from pregnancy-related causes.

The report cited Norway's high ratio of female-to-male earned income as one reason for its chart-topping status, as well as its high contraceptive prevalence rate. Norwegians also enjoy one of the lowest mortality rates for children under the age of 5.

Also rounding out the top 10 best places for mothers to live were seven other western European countries, including Iceland in third place and Sweden in fourth.

The United States also has the least generous maternity leave policy of any developed nation and has fewer women in politics than many European countries, with only 17% of congressional seats held by women. Its mortality rate for children under age 5 is 8 per 1,000 births, putting it behind 40 other countries.

In order to improve the United States' rank on the list, it will be necessary to make health care and education more easily available for disadvantaged mothers, the report concluded.

Quality of life was toughest for mothers in Afghanistan, where women have the lowest life expectancy in the world. Unsurprisingly, the nation was named the worst place in the world for a mother.

Also in the bottom 10 were eight sub-Saharan countries, including Sudan at No. 156, Chad at No. 160, and Niger at No. 163.