Just in time for Mother's Day, an annual ranking of the best and worst countries in which to be a mom puts the USA in 25th place, up from 31st last year. 
 
 The 13th annual State of the World's Mothers report by the Save the Children foundation, out today, examines the well-being of mothers and their children in 165 countries, based on a range of measures, including mothers' education, infant mortality and breastfeeding rates. 
 
 Norway tops the overall list of best places to be a mother and ranks among the very best on contraceptive use, female education and political representation. It has one of the most generous maternity leave policies in the developed world. 
 
 The improvement in the USA's rank is due largely to increases in its already high educational status, which benefits the economic potential of women and mothers, says Carolyn Miles, president of the charity. 
 
 The USA still performs below average overall and quite poorly on a number of measures, Miles says, including: 
 
 •Lifetime risk of dying from childbirth. Mothers in the USA face a one-in-2,100 risk of maternal death, the highest of any industrialized nation. 
 
 •Mortality rate of children. The death rate for children younger than 5 is eight per 1,000 births, on par with Bosnia and Herzegovina. A child in the USA is four times as likely as a child in Iceland to die before age 5. Forty countries performed better than the U.S. 
 
 •Maternity leave policies. Policies in the USA are among the least generous of any wealthy nation. It is the only developed country, and one of only a handful of countries in the world, that does not guarantee working mothers paid leave. "The U.S. has moved up, but it's still not great, falling near the bottom among most wealthy nations," Miles says. 
 
 Niger, in Western Africa, is last on the index. It is in the grip of a worsening hunger situation, threatening the lives of a million children, Miles says. 
 
 The child mortality rate in Niger is one in six, vs. one in 333 in Norway, offering "the starkest contrast that you can see" between two countries, she says. 
 
 The report emphasizes nutrition as a key factor in determining mothers' and their children's well-being. Malnutrition is the underlying cause of more than 2.6 million child deaths each year, it says. An additional 171 million children suffer stunted growth. "Nearly 1 million lives could be saved by breastfeeding alone," Miles says. 
 
 The findings should serve "as a fire alarm to countries and people to look at this situation and draw them together to come up with an action plan," says Jennifer Requejo, a maternal and infant health researcher at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. She was not involved in the research. ||||| Niger is the worst country on earth in which to be a mother, according to a report by Save the Children. The charity's annual Mothers' Index uses statistics covering female and child health and nutrition, as well as prospects for women's education, economic prosperity and political participation in its assessment of 165 countries. 
 
 Niger's current food crisis bears much of the blame for its placing at the bottom of the list, just above Afghanistan, Yemen, Guinea-Bissau and Mali. The report also found high levels of maternal mortality, lack of access to contraception and poor levels of income relative to men's. 
 
 Afghanistan, which came last the previous two years, was credited for providing skilled assistance at more births and a reduction in female mortality rates, among other factors. 
 
 Hunger and deprivation are the chief factors keeping other developing nations, such as Eritrea, Chad, Sudan and South Sudan, near the bottom of the list. Of 73 developing nations on the table, which account for 95% of child deaths, the Save the Children report rates only four as "very good" for child nutrition. Of the bottom 10 nations, four have seen an increase in stunted growth in children caused by poor nutrition over the past 20 years. 
 
 The authors stress that income is not the only thing that matters: Vietnam's per capita income is 25% less than that of India, yet it has half the rates of stunting. 
 
 Norway is rated as the world's best place to be a mother, followed by Iceland, Sweden, New Zealand and Denmark. The UK is joint 10th with the Netherlands, three places up from 2011. The US is rated 25th, with the report pointing to maternal death rates 15 times higher than those in Greece and infant mortality four times greater than in Iceland. The US also scores the worst among developed nations for encouraging breastfeeding. 
 
 The report "shows clearly that this crisis of chronic malnutrition has devastating effects on both mothers and their children", said Brendan Cox, Save the Children's director of policy. He said: "We urgently need global leadership on malnutrition that results in key nutrition projects being rolled out for mothers and babies to ensure their health and survival." 
 
 Save the Children has highlighted the vast differences between women's experience in Niger and the UK, with those in the former expecting only four years of formal tuition and having a one in 16 chance of dying from a pregnancy-related cause, against almost one in 5,000 in the UK. 
 
 Childhood malnutrition is a vicious circle, the report notes, with women stunted from early deprivation going on to produce underweight babies who have not been adequately nourished in the womb, an effect magnified all the more if the mother remains poorly fed or overworked. The charity wants countries to break this pattern by focusing efforts on a child's first 1,000 days, starting from the beginning of pregnancy. 
 
 Save the Children argues that even supporting mothers to breastfeed could save a million children's lives a year.
– Good news for American moms: The United States is a slightly better place to be a mother than it was last year, according to Save the Children's 13th annual report on the topic. The US rose from 31st to 25th place in its look at 165 countries. For the best places to be called Mom, look to Nordic countries: Norway took top honors, followed by Iceland, Sweden, New Zealand, and Denmark, reports the Guardian. Niger brings up the rear, below Afghanistan, Yemen, Guinea-Bissau, and Mali. Among the deciding factors: infant and mother mortality, breastfeeding rates, nutrition, female education, and maternity-leave policies. USA Today reports that America's rise is credited largely to increases in mothers' educational rates, but it's not all good news. Some of the gloomier points: The US is No. 1 among industrialized nations when it comes to maternal deaths, with a rate of one in 2,100; the death rate for children under five is eight in 1,000, ranking us alongside Bosnia and Herzegovina; and our maternity-leave policies lag far behind those of other developed countries.