Not surprisingly, Switzerland occupies the top spot of the WEF's Human Capital Report. Carolyn Gregoire writes for HuffPo:
Just one example - excellent health care:Switzerland is home to one of the world's most thriving economies and also one of the happiest populations on the globe. So what's the Swiss secret sauce? The tiny, landlocked central European country is known for investing in its people. In fact, according to the World Economic Forum's 2013 Human Capital Report, Switzerland invests more in the health, education and talent of its people than any other country in the world. ...
Human capital is a function of four pillars: health and wellness, education, work and employment, and what WEF calls an "enabling environment," which includes factors like legal framework and infrastructure that allow for returns on human capital. Switzerland topped the index by generating high scores across the four pillars, coming in first in the health and wellness and workforce and employment categories, second for enabling environment and fourth in education -- which goes a long way in explaining the success of the Swiss economy.
When it comes to health and wellness -- taking into account longevity, infant mortality, the general state of physical and mental health of the population, and quality of healthcare -- the Index places the Swiss in the number-one spot. Thanks to the Santésuisse system, the Swiss have the lowest government spending on health care in the developed world -- and some of the healthiest citizens.
"The Swiss have universal coverage, the healthiest population in the Western Hemisphere, and a government that spends a mere 2.7 percent of GDP on health care: about a third of what ours spends," writes Forbes's Avik Roy. "The Swiss system isn’t perfectly transposable onto the United States, but it is vastly superior. And the Swiss do it with a top federal income tax rate of only 11.5 percent, compared to 35 percent in the U.S. of A."
