The United States ranks 19th among nations in its ability to provide security and overall well being for retirees, according to the 2014 Global Retirement Index released Tuesday.

It is the same ranking the U.S. achieved in the first retirement index published last year by Natixis Global Asset Management, which has more than $838 billion in assets under management.

Switzerland, Norway and Austria took the top three spots in the analysis of 150 nations.

The retirement index is based on 20 key trends that are grouped into four areas:  health and health-care quality, personal income and finance, quality of life and socio-economic factors. The index is based on data from a number of sources including the World Bank and the United Nations.

“Together, these trends provide a dynamic measure of the life conditions and well being expected by retirees and near-retirees,” says Natixis.

For overall retirement security, the U.S. remains behind most of the countries in Western Europe and Canada. Individuals are being forced to take more responsibility for their own retirement, which will increase the importance of financial advisors, says David Lafferty, chief market strategist for Natixis.

“The individual investor is not equipped to deal with global financial markets, which raises the bar for financial advisors,” he adds. “The U.S. needs more simplicity in the financial industry as the world is getting more complicated.”

The U.S. also faces challenges in the area of health care, according to the index. The U.S. spends more per capita on health care than any other nation. However, life expectancy is lower than in most advanced Western countries, and access to medical care – despite recent reforms – remains limited primarily due to cost obstacles, Natixis says.

At the same time, Natixis notes that Americans enjoy the sixth-best per-capita income in the world, but two factors are keeping the U.S. from gaining ground in this category: a high level of income inequality and persistent unemployment. Norway, Luxembourg, Austria and Kuwait are the leaders in this category.

Government indebtedness is one of the report’s new measures and the U.S. ranks among the world’s 10 worst nations on this metric. However, the U.S. showed improvement in the overall strength of its financial institutions and in the area of tax pressure, the index shows.

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