Singapore and Hong Kong rank among the two most “lucky” places for someone to be born in, according to a list of countries ranked for giving people the most desirable start in life, according to a report by the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Switzerland, meanwhile, retains the top ranking, shrugging off worries about retaining its status as the world’s biggest offshore financial centre, the EIU report said.

And strikingly, whereas the rankings, first introduced in 1988, put the US in top spot, Uncle Sam now only rates 16^th for being the most desirable place to be born in.

The rankings appear in an article for the Economist, called 'The lottery of life', by Laza Kekic, director for country forecasting at the Economist Intelligence Unit, and it is published in The World in 2013, the latest edition in The Economist's annual series on the year ahead.

As Kekic writes: "Quibblers will, of course, find more holes in all this than there are in a chunk of Swiss cheese. America was helped to the top spot back in 1988 by the inclusion in the ranking of a `philistine factor' (for cultural poverty) and a `yawn index' (the degree to which a country might, despite all its virtues, be irredeemably boring). Switzerland scored terribly on both counts. In the film `The Third Man', Orson Welles’ character, the rogue Harry Lime, famously says that Italy for 30 years had war, terror and murder under the Borgias but in that time produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance; Switzerland had 500 years of peace and democracy—and produced the cuckoo clock. However, there is surely a lot to be said for boring stability in today’s (and no doubt tomorrow’s) uncertain times."

Behind Switzerland in top spot is Australia (2); Norway (3);  Sweden (4); Denmark (5); Singapore (6); New Zealand (7); Netherlands (8); Canada (9), and Hong Kong in 10^th place. Taiwan is at 14^th, while other Asia jurisdictions mentioned include South Korea, at 19^th, and Japan, at 25^th.

Further afield, the UK stands at 27^th, Germany at 16^th (jointly with the US) and France at 26^th, the EIU said. Nigeria ranked at 80^th, as the worst place to enter the world in 2013.

The list takes into factors such as geography, demography, social and cultural characteristics, as well as economic factors to determine the quality of life across countries.  Specific indicators include GDP per head, life expectancy at birth, quality of family life, political freedom, job security, climate, personal security, community life, governance and gender equality.