You can come out from behind the sofa now. There is no longer any need to hide from drunks, murderers, or even the prospect of a stiff lecture about your carbon footprint. Because I bring unexpected good news: things are not quite as terrible in Britain as we have feared.

The Economist has just published its Pocket World in Figures, the magazine’s annual snapshot of the world in statistics. If you have been waiting agog to learn which country produces the most natural and synthetic rubber, I can at last put you out of your misery. Well done, Thailand. It also reveals that the most dangerous roads are in Qatar, while Norway is a beacon of sexual equality to the rest of the world.

What about Britain? Once we were the indisputable top nation. So where are we now in the league of nations – mighty Manchester United or plucky Accrington Stanley?

No figures have yet been compiled to assess which country has the most gloomy, pessimistic people, but the British would surely be up there in, say, the top one. We believe ourselves to be drunk, sexually feckless and careless of our carbon footprint.

Yet according to The Economist, none of this is true. Or rather, it might well be true but other countries are much drunker and more sexually feckless.

Let’s start, though, with the bad news. Although we are the world’s fifth largest economy (behind the United States, Japan, Germany and China) our success does not appear to be making us very happy.

All that wealth we’re generating has to be spread around a relatively large population. So when living standards are measured – on gross domestic product per head – we slip to 16th behind nations such as Norway, Ireland, Sweden, Andorra and Finland. And we slip one place further on our quality of life. Norway is apparently the best place in the world to live, followed by Iceland and Australia. Even the Belgians are better off than the British under this United Nations rating that measures factors such as income, adult literacy and life expectancy.

Our high cost of living can’t help our feeling of wellbeing. Only the Norwegians, French and Danes find life more expensive. Our office space is particularly costly: of the top 20 most expensive places to rent an office, eight are in the UK.

In fact, London’s West End and City fill two of the top three places in the league table of expensive office space. Despite this drawback, we punch well above our weight when it comes to the economy. We attract more inward investment than any other country (it’s even rumoured that some of this $164,530m is not spent on Premier League football clubs) and we are bigger exporters than China.

Yet in other respects we are very much a mid-table nation. We are 18th for business innovation, 15th for information technology, 16th for gender equality, 20th for global competitiveness, but 10th when countries are ranked by business environment (Denmark is top, but if you’re thinking of moving there you should know that its house prices went up by 23% last year – the world’s biggest increase).

Let’s look on the bright side. We are much greener, more generous, more sober and more careful about sex than our reputation might suggest.

If, for example, you are a woman who is aged between 15 and 49 and either married or in a steady relationship, then you are a world leader in contraception. Just over 80% of women in the UK use “modern methods” of contraception (which covers pretty much everything except the rhythm method and crossing your fingers). Only Chinese women are more enthusiastic.

And despite evidence that is readily available in any of our towns or cities on Friday or Saturday night, we don’t appear to be all that keen on alcohol. We rank a mere 18th on general drink sales – way behind Australia, the clear leaders in this field – and 12th on wine sales. For beer, we don’t even make the top 20.

What are we doing with all that money we’re not spending on beer? We’re giving it to the poor and needy, that’s what. Although we are the fifth largest economy, we are the third biggest aid donor.

The government gives away more than £10,700m each year in foreign aid – that’s about £180 each. Only the United States and Japan give more, and possibly China, which doesn’t like to talk about its charity work and so doesn’t feature in the table.

We are also setting a good example to the world when it comes to green issues. Despite our economic success, we’re not even in the top 20 consumers of energy. Kuwait leads the list of shame, followed by the United Arab Emirates (it must be all that air conditioning). The French, Americans, Canadians and Belgians are all more profligate than we are. Even the careful Swedes and Norwegians use more energy per head than the UK.

Our greenish credentials are boosted by our relatively low ranking when it comes to carbon dioxide emissions per person. We are 23rd – better than Norway, Finland and Denmark and much better than Australia.

The Pocket Guide also reveals why our armed forces are looking so stretched at the moment: they are tiny in comparison with other nations. The defence secretary, who commands the world’s fourth largest defence budget, has just 191,000 regulars and 199,000 reservists at his disposal, putting us in 26th place. France, Italy, Syria and even Morocco have larger forces.

If The Economist contains surprises about Britain, it’s nothing compared with the shocks provided by the Top Ten of Everything 2008, which will be published by Hamlyn later this month. For a start, this book overturns two long-held beliefs that are central to the British psyche: that we are the world’s greatest pet lovers and that it’s always raining.

Both wrong, I’m afraid. The Germans, French and Italians all own more pets than the British – we’re ranked just ninth. And we don’t even make the top 10 when it comes to rainy days. The world’s wettest place is somewhere usually associated with sunshine – Hawaii, where Mount Waialeale suffers 335 days of rain a year. And once you know that it’s comparatively sunny in Britain, life suddenly doesn’t seem so bad.

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