A year after her racial reckoning, many have questioned
America's status as the world's foremost superpower.
Yet, no matter the metric, the point remains—the U.S. is the
greatest country in the world, bar none.
Here are five facts illustrating America's continued
preeminence on the world stage.
1. The U.S. is among the world’s most racially tolerant countries.
The below infographic maps data from the World Values
Survey, which—among other questions—asked respondents to select the types of
people they would not want to be neighbors with.
“In the bluer countries, fewer people said they would not
want neighbors of a different race; in red countries, more people did,” writes
Max Fisher for The Washington Post.
2. The United States is the most generous country in the
world.
A 2019 report from the CAF World Giving Index—a research
project involving over 1.3 million participants across the globe—looked at 10
years’ worth of data to determine “where people are most likely to engage in
prosocial activities and to champion the growth of global giving.”
According to the report, “The most generous country in the
world over a decade of CAF World Giving Index is the United States of America.”
3. If the United States’ “poor” were a nation, it would
be among the world’s richest.
According to a 2020 article from the Foundation for Economic Education,
federal poverty statistics “omit a broad range of government benefits, charity,
and unreported income.”
“When these are counted, the poorest fifth of U.S.
households consume five times more goods and services than the poverty stats
reveal."
"These material resources amount to an average of more
than $50,000 per household per year, making the poorest fifth of Americans
richer than the averages for all people in most developed
nations of the world,” the article says.
4. Immigrants flock to the U.S. in droves, and the U.S.
takes more of them in than any other country.
Over 1 million immigrants enter the United States each year.
According to a 2020 Pew Research Center article, “The United States has more immigrants than any
other country in the world. Today, more than 40 million people living in the
U.S. were born in another country, accounting for about one-fifth of the
world’s migrants.”
For context, the United States has about 4% of the world’s population.
5. The U.S. has resettled far more than its “fair share”
of refugees.
According to the Pew Research Center, “The U.S. has resettled more refugees
than any other country – about 3 million since 1980.”
“Between 1982 and 2016, the U.S. admitted more than
two-thirds (69%) of the world’s resettled refugees, followed by Canada (14%)
and Australia (11%).”
This far exceeds the United States’ share of the world population (4%).
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