“Given the neighborhood you’re in geographically, what’s the risk like here,” I asked the guy sitting next to me at the sushi bar?
The woman to his right, a colleague I think, piped up. “I live outside of Tel Aviv, and I’ll put my 10-year-old on a bus into city without any worries. ‘Just keep your phone on’ is all I say.”
As that last paragraph reveals, this conversation happened in Israel. This was a few weeks back, when I spent four days in Tel Aviv at a local crypto conference. Last night in town, I ducked into a highly-rated sushi joint, where I bumped into this pair. They, too, are writers—one for an Israeli newspaper, one for a marketing agency. I impolitely interrupted their conversation because a) it was in American English and b) they were talking about newspaper stuff. As a former Wall Street Journal writer I was naturally curious.
Frankly, most of that information is pointless for this dispatch. I’m just setting the scene for context about the bigger message here: safety.
Hours prior to this sushi dinner, I’d been reading on my phone and up popped a new report on the Global Peace Index 2023 from the Institute for Economics & Peace. I paid attention only to the degree that I saw Portugal, where I’m moving, ranks #7 in the world for safety.
I knew the U.S. would rank poorly among the safest countries in the world, so I didn’t even bother looking.
But then I had that dinner conversation. And it had me thinking about the U.S. in context of living and working and retiring overseas.
I know from conversations at conferences that safety is a defining issue for people who leave one country for another. It seems obvious when you think about migration from, say, Ukraine or Russia, or parts of Africa and Central America.
Yet it’s also a top-of-mind concern for Americans.
America Is Far From One of the Safest Countries in the World
There’s a Newsweek story I remember from late last year, a New York family that moved to Portugal, largely for safety reasons. I went and tracked down that story. Here’s what the writer wrote:
We moved abroad for many reasons, but it was partly because things were happening around us that made us feel less safe. There was more violence and crime during the pandemic—even in our fairly safe neighborhood of Park Slope, Brooklyn. We were getting all these alerts on an app, which was new: a stabbing on this corner, a shop owner held up at gunpoint on this street. And these things were all happening within a very small radius around us. It felt like we really had to be aware of our surroundings when we went out.
My daughter also started kindergarten in 2020, so I knew she would have to do the mandated active shooter drills. It was terrifying because not only do you hope that your child will never be attacked, but there is also no way to protect your child from the trauma of having to do those drills.
I feel it’s not normal for children to have to understand that someone could break into their school and try to shoot them.
I hear all kinds of snarky comments about Europe from some of my friends. But the stark reality—a reality some wrongly scoff at— is that Europe is the safest place in the world. I can’t explain why that is other than to surmise that Europe suffered centuries of internecine violence among tribes and nationalities and religious groups, and somewhere along the way, they got the message that all this violence and death is freakin’ stupid.
Civility emerged. Logical gun laws emerged. A sense of respect emerged.
That’s not to say Europe is violence-free. Of course, violence occurs on a sporadic basis.
But there’s a reason Western Europe leads the world in peace. Why it’s home to the safest countries in the world.
And a reason America ranks 131 on a list of 163 countries.
That number is … stunning: 131 on a list of 163.
Wanna Live Safe? Get Out of America!
America is two spots above Eritrea. Three above Palestine. Four above Lebanon. We’re 18 below the Republic of the Congo.
That says something—though nothing good, of course.
Which is why it’s not hard to understand the desire to feel safer in your own environment.
I’ve never once felt unsafe in Prague in the five years I’ve lived here, (Czech Republic ranks #12 in safety globally). I’ve never once felt even remotely unsafe anywhere I’ve traveled in Portugal. Same in Germany. Switzerland, Austria, Croatia, and Italy, too. In Barcelona, Spain, I once had a vagabond try to steal my backpack on the beach, but that’s the worst I’ve ever dealt with across the 35 European countries I’ve visited.
There are all kinds of reasons to consider living, working, retiring abroad—cost of living, opportunity, adventure.
Increasingly from Americans—and sadly—safety is now a primary concern.
No one should have to worry about dying simply going to the post office, or the mall, or church. No parent should worry about sending kids to a school, wondering if that’s the last time they’ll see them alive.
There are 130 places in the world safer than America. And that is the most damning indictment I can think of … and an excellent reason to consider a safer life abroad.