The economic boom of the 1990s has landed in some unlikely places. The Irish economy got a sad 32 rating, enough to keep it far from the Top 10. In 2000, the Celtic Tiger's rampage puts Ireland in the No. 7 spot overall - above France and Germany and just below the United Kingdom, which also missed the Top 10 a decade ago, mostly because of its outlandish cost of living and lukewarm economy. Ethiopia, Mali, Mauritania, the Central African Republic, Niger, Mozambique, and Burkina Faso all crawled up a few notches, mostly due to uglier wars and to instability in our new Bottom 10. In the end, the most comforting discovery in comparing our indexes from 1990 and 2000 is that there are now more winners than losers.
More people are free, and more people are benefiting from the global economy.
And there's an ever growing number of undiscovered places where you can live well and do the same work on a laptop that would have required a corporate office building just 10 short years ago. It's our job to tell you about these places first. The top 10 1. United States 2. West Germany 4.