Malaysia ranked 37th on Newsweek's "The World's Best Countries" list

Malaysia is ranked 37th in the world on Newsweek magazine's "The World's Best Countries" list, which ranks top globe nations by economy, politics, education, health and quality of life.

Among neighbours, Singapore is ranked 20th, Thailand (58th), Philippines (63rd) and Indonesia (73rd). In the rating, which involves 100 countries, Finland is ranked as number one, followed by Switzerland and Sweden.

In Newsweek's first-ever Best Countries special issue, they set out to answer a question that is at once simple and incredibly complex — if you were born today, which country would provide you the very best opportunity to live a healthy, safe, reasonably prosperous, and upwardly mobile life?

For this special survey, Newsweek chose five categories of national well-being — education, health, quality of life, economic competitiveness, and political environment — and compiled metrics within these categories across 100 nations.

The magazine also listed Malaysia as the eighth best in education category among the upper middle-income countries. Top three of the category are Kazakhstan, Poland and Cuba.