The US is now ranked the worst place in the developed world to raise a family, coming out ahead of only Mexico.

By Laura Begley Bloom

Forbes

As if things couldn’t get worse. According to a new study from the travel website Asher & Lyric, the United States is the second worst place in the world to raise a family. The country came in at a shockingly low 34th place out of 35 countries, only beating out crime-ridden Mexico. Topping the list of best places to raise a family were countries like Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Finland (which was recently named the happiest country in the world for the third year in a row).

“This study has been eye-opening for me,” says Los Angeles-based journalist Lyric Fergusson, who runs the site with her husband Asher and is a mother of two. “Even as a well educated, thoughtful individual, I had become so numb to the country’s inadequacies that I must have simply disregarded my personal experience for the rhetoric of the nation.”

The husband-wife journalists—who are known for mapping out data-driven travel lists like the most dangerous places for women travelers and the most dangerous places for gay travelers—created the Raising a Family Index to rank 35 countries that are part of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). “We only used OECD countries because they have reliable data in a wide range of key topics useful for this study,” notes Fergusson.

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