Second in a series in which we look at how Americans rank in different categories against the citizens of other nations around the world. Because obviously, if you want to ‘make America great again’, you’ve got to have great Americans doing that. Right?
So let’s take a look at how Americans are doing in various categories. Note that this post uses some 2022 data provided by Investopedia. We’ll start with a measure near and dear to American hearts. An economic factor:
BEST COUNTRY FOR ENTREPENEURS OR TO START A BUSINESS
Okay, so this one is subjective. One person’s best country to start a business is England, while England is another person’s Brexit nightmare. (The UK does tend to rank highly for entrepreneurship.)
U.S. News & World Report gives Americans top marks for entrepreneurship based on things like the entrepreneurial character of Americans, their access to capital, and their connections around the world. The publication also thinks Americans score highly on infrastructure measures important to entrepreneurship. These elements include digital infrastructure and technological and legal expertise. Put bluntly, America is a highly developed country and that helps its entrepreneurs with everything from reducing uncertainty to handling logistics.
Another element of a population that’s often helpful to entrepreneurs is a highly educated citizenry. As we’ll see below, Americans are not exactly slouches in this area compared to global averages, but it is an area where they could be more great….
America’s #1 entrepreneurial hotspot, California’s Silicon Valley, attracts the most highly educated people in the country, though. And that one entrepreneurial hotspot is enough to make America the land of dreams of entrepreneurial success. After all, Apple, Google, Facebook…I mean come on, Silicon Valley has some pretty impressive entrepreneurial credentials.
On the other hand…..
The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) annual report boots Americans down to #15 on the list of the most entrepreneurial people right now. The GEM ranks United Arab Emirates #1 for entrepreneurship. This seems surprising because Americans typically have a very powerful drive toward getting rich. Americans value wealth, and entrepreneurship is perhaps the most effective way to get extremely wealthy. But the reality is, a quite small percentage of Americans start a business, maybe 6 or 7 percent. Most Americans neither need nor want to start a business, unlike in some areas, where starting a business may be a matter of survival.
In Uganda, for example, there is a comparatively high percentage of women who are business owners because they have to be to survive. This type of drive toward entrepreneurship is different than the traditional American ‘land of opportunity’ mentality toward starting a business.
It can also be argued and some do, that the American electorate, via unfortunate electoral support for increasing wealth concentration and income inequality, has tilted the playing field against entrepreneurship over the last 40 years. The scene in Silicon Valley is great if you have connections and access to capital for the next tech unicorn, but the garden variety entrepreneur in American can struggle. Reforms may be in order if America is serious about being truly great for entrepreneurs at every level.
VERDICT: Americans are great at entrepreneurship – but not as great as they think they are.
ARE AMERICANS THE BEST EDUCATED?
Education is a key component of greatness, at least from a business perspective. So – are Americans great at education?
People around the world believe they are – at least according to a survey by the ubiquitous U.S. News & World Report. Americans rank #1 in their survey. In reality, though, American citizens are not as educated as those in some other countries. The UN tracks this sort of thing in its annual Human Development Index. The Human Development Index includes an Education Index that ranks nations based on factors like the mean (average) level of educational attainment in a country. Americans fare well in this index but not as well as UK citizens or Australians.
The Education Index also ranks countries according to the inequality in their education systems. Americans again do quite well in this area – but not as well as some other countries like Canada.
However, as noted above, America has traditionally had among the best universities in the world. America is home to five of the top 10 universities in the world, while a country like Germany doesn’t show up until number 49 in the rankings. Americans are great at this type of education partly because they are willing to spend a lot of money on education.
The US spends 5.44% of its GDP on expenses related to education as of 2024, with the per capita government expenditure on education coming up to $4,371 as of the same year.
The Country With the Best Education System in the World (yahoo.com)
Where Americans don’t rank as highly is in regards to the younger students – those below college age. Almost all children around the world get enrolled in primary education – about 91 percent. Not nearly as many make it all the way through secondary education.
In secondary education, a Singapore is the country that shines. In international comparisons of adolescent performance in math, science, and reading, Singapore crushes the competition. It’s not that American teens are terrible at math; they’re just not that great. In terms of these international comparisons, Americans do better in reading and science than in math.
VERDICT: Americans are great at university education. Singapore kicks American ass at the high school level.
One reason Singapore is so great at secondary education is that it pays attention. Singaporeans test and measure what works and what doesn’t in terms of actual performance. This approach has led Singapore to advance in the rankings, i.e., to become greater at pre-college education over time. The American system, meanwhile, is more decentralized and disorganized. American children face vastly different levels of educational competence in their schools and it shows.
Also, for some reason, Americans really like to make their educational systems a whipping boy for other social conflicts, like hair. Really. For reasons that defy rational explanation (because they are not rational reasons), American school systems will kick kids out of school for their hair. Because it’s natural. Because it’s long. Because it’s a form of discrimination. Because Americans don’t want everyone to be great.
In spite of American weirdness at the pre-college level, with a bit greater investment, Americans could be number one at both university and secondary education. On the other hand, initiatives like Project 2025 could make America far less great education if their proposals are enacted.
OKAY, BUT WHAT ABOUT GDP PER CAPITA? ARE AMERICANS GREAT AT THAT?
In Part 1, we saw that America’s gross domestic product, a measure of its economic might, is still the greatest in the world. But what about Americans, not just America? Is the economic output per American (per capita GDP) as impressive as the total GDP of the country?
Take a guess!
Actually, America comes in below places like the Cayman Islands in terms of per capita productivity. In fact, the top countries in terms of per capita GDP are small but wealthy nations like Monaco. Norway, Ireland, Singapore, and Switzerland also rank highly. Americans come in 12th in the world by this measure.
It must be noted that by this measure, the Chinese rank very low. The Chinese GDP per capita is said to be $12,614. Russia isn’t much better at a per capita GDP of only $13,817. Saudi Arabia, highly dependent on oil exports, has a per capita GDP of $28,895. South Korea has a per capita GDP of $33,121.
Meanwhile, the per capita GDP of Americans is $81,695 as of 2022.
Verdict: Americans are kinda great. Maybe we’ll call it very good.
There is room for improvement but Americans are nothing like Indonesians who have a per capita GDP of only $4,940. And c’mon when you are more than twice as productive as the citizens of the country that produced BTS, you’re doing something right.
WHAT ABOUT THE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT INDEX? HOW DOES AMERICA RANK IN TERMS OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT, NOT JUST ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT?
We talked a bit about the Human Development Index when we talked about education. The Human Development Index was created by the United Nations to do cross-nation comparisons of basic indicators of how the people in a nation are doing. It measures life expectancy at birth, education, and standard of living.
Care to guess where Americans rank in terms of these basic quality of life indicators?
Well, below Hong Kong. Below the Netherlands. Those tall Dutch have beaten the Americans again!
Americans rank below Canadians. The Irish are tied for 7th in this ranking, far above the US. America is tied for 20th in terms of life expectancy, education and income levels.
But hey, Americans do beat Israelis and the Maltese. And Americans are doing waaaaaay better than the Venezuelans. That’s something, right?
VERDICT: Americans are doing okay. But not great.
Americans tend to value the economy over the people the economy is supposed to serve. To put it another way, Americans like money. Other Americans – not so much.
WELL, HOW DOES AMERICAN LIFE EXPECTANCY RANK?
Average American life expectancy is 77 years. That seems pretty great in the abstract but if you look at other nations with high GDP well then….
Japan, for example, is famous for its long-lived citizens. The average life expectancy for the Japanese is 84 years. Yeah, that’s 7 years more than Americans. Canadians live on average 81 years. The Israelis live even longer – an average of 83 years. Even Thailand has a greater life expectancy than America: 80 years.
Of course, Americans are still better than the Russians. Russians only live, on average, to 73 years. Brazilians clock in at the same average life expectancy: 73 years.
Verdict: Americans would be great at life expectancy – if only so many other countries weren’t so much greater.
HOW ABOUT INFANT MORTALITY? HOW DO AMERICANS FARE IN THAT SPHERE?
DO AMERICAN INFANTS DIE AT A FASTER CLIP THAN IN OTHER NATIONS OR DO THEY SURVIVE AND GROW UP TO BE GREAT AMERICANS?
Wellllllll……….It depends on how you look at things.
If you compare Americans to people in European countries like Austria and Italy, then Americans suck big time at keeping their tiny infants alive. The infant mortality rate in the US is more than double that of Italy. It’s less than double that of Austria but still significantly higher. Americans just flat out do not seem to care as much about mothers and tiny children as the people in other developed nations. No amount of preaching about so-called ‘family values’ or whatnot overcomes the cold, bare facts.
In fact, America is more like the China. The Chinese infant mortality rate is 5 per thousand live births, and the average life expectancy is 79 years. The American infant mortality rate is 5 per thousand live births, and the average life expectancy is 77 years. Put the two together and Americans fare worse than the Chinese in terms of these basic health statistics. That’s pretty lame.
On the other hand, Americans are not as bad as off as the Saudi Arabians (6 deaths per thousand live births) or those in Turkey (8 deaths per thousand live births). So it’s not like Americans have exactly slipped down as far as many developing nations have.
And at least Americans don’t have to endure what the Venezuelans do: 21 deaths per thousand live births. Almost everything in Venezuela is pretty terrible, though.
For the record, the infant mortality rate in Italy is 2 deaths per thousand live births and Austria’s is 3 deaths per thousand live births.
Verdict: Americans are not that great in terms of infant mortality rates. America is not as bad as many other nations, but great it is not.
BUT AMERICA IS STILL THE MOST POWERFUL COUNTRY IN THE WORLD, RIGHT?
Yup. U.S. News and World Report puts America at the top of the global power rankings, and so do CEOWORLD and Global Firepower.
Part of the power of Americans comes from things like Hollywood, whose movies influence people around the globe whether they want to be influenced or not. The truth is, it’s hard to resist the appeal of American movies on the big screen, and many of them have been awe-inspiring.
Americans have also traditionally had some of the premier research institutions in the world, and that’s created a different sort of power. America’s universities have set the standard around the world. All of this means that elite and highly educated Americans have, in their own way, global power. And these elite Americans attract the highly intelligent elite of the rest of the world, luring them into becoming Americans too.
Further, despite often legitimate criticism, American intelligence agencies wield a lot of power in the world, for good, for ill, and for both. Which ties right in with American military spending, and by extension, power. America has, without doubt, the strongest military in the world. American sanctions can also do real damage to other countries, and America has been surprisingly persuasive in getting other countries to join in.
And that’s where the real strength of Americans and their power in the world lies – alliances. Americans were among the founding members of the United Nations and, of course, NATO. America’s continuing participation in NATO contributes to its power on the world stage. Europe cannot be said to be an emerging power, but its highly developed economies and nations (such as Germany and the UK) still wield a lot of global clout.
We already talked about America’s economic heft in Part 1 of this series. America’s GDP and GDP per capita translate into real power – i.e., the power to buy what it wants in the world. Those corporations we mentioned above in the section on entrepreneurship (Apple, Google, Facebook) also contribute mightily to the power of Americans across the globe. And, lest we forget, the US dollar is still the globe’s #1 reserve currency.
VERDICT: Wow, Americans are so great!
So great they’re kind of spoiled. Americans today are the inheritors of American greatness after World War II. American military power grew at an absolutely astonishing rate during World War II. So it is not a matter of making Americans great again, it is matter of American greatness in the future. For example, American companies like Boeing once had unquestioned world dominance – now Boeing is beset by profit-taking self-induced wounds.
It is fairly obvious to everyone that China is making a play for global power and succeeding in many of its aims. As we noted in Part 1 of this series, China and India both have so many people that their power is likely to increase in the future. Russia, in spite of its inherent limitations, is still militarily quite strong, and with its massive land mass and coterie of satellite nations, quite powerful. Other, seemingly unlikely, countries such as Mexico are predicted to grow in power in the future.
So the question is – to what extent will America be able to safeguard its power in this century?
SUMMARY: So what do we think of Americans now – based on these rankings?
Americans are still the Big Men on Campus when it comes to overall military and economic might. Americans are also still in the upper echelons of advancement when it comes to the most sophisticated forms of education. When Americans are great at something difficult and technical, they’re very very great.
When it comes to Americans treating other Americans like human beings though, Americans are not that interested. America does not treat mothers and small children well. Or manage to keep people alive for as long as a lot of other nations.
And Americans don’t distribute income and education very equitably. What that means is that, in spite of American economic might and dominance, Americans consistently leave money on the table by not developing the human capital that’s the engine for economic greatness.
Americans are so close to being greater at so many more things than they are now – if only they could stand to lend their fellow Americans a helping hand.
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