Standard of living ranking
 

Yo, I've just read an article about a ranking that is made every 3 years I think. In the ranking they compare the expected average life span and number of an illiterates in different countries, they even developed an index to calculate to have a number to comper (index goes from 0 (very very poor) to 1 (best possible), but none is able to get a 1 xD). I just felt like telling you about it cause it's kinda interessting ;) :vsign:

Ranking (just part of it):

Last Position: Niger
Position 25: Greece
Position 24: Hong Kong
Position 23: Singapore (last time position 6)
Position 22: Germany
Position 21: Great Britain
Position 20: New Zeeland
Position 19: Lichtenstein
Position 18: Italy
Position 17: Belgium
Position 16: Denmark
Position 15: Spain
Position 14: Austria
Position 13: USA
Position 12: Finland
Position 11: Luxemburg
Position 10: Japan
Position 09: Switzerland
Position 08: France
Position 07: Sweden
Position 06: Netherlands (last time position 1)
Position 05: Ireland
Position 04: Canada
Position 03: Iceland
Position 02: Australia
Position 01: Norway

So this is the Ranking. I hope it's easy to read and the notes with "las time position..." are based on last study 2006, countries with no notes have same positons as last time so no changes. :)

This doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me....is Position 25 best or really bad?

Compared to the other 186 countries (niger has position 186) it's very good^^

What's your source? Last time I say a Quality of Life ranking, Ireland and Switzerland were top!

My source is an article at msn info site.

Hail Sweden ;) It's a really good country.

yeah, but I wonder why germany is worse Great Britain, Italy and Spain. I always hear about teenagers getting pregnant, suicides due to mobbing, etc. of those countries :/

Interesting article, thanks for sharing. I'm just glad they didn't try to use the GDP per capita as a measure of a country's standard of living. I cringe when I see those as all they do is a show how productive the country is compared to the actual state of life there. Though I always wonder where studies like this get their information from. Whenever I see a survey, I'm like "What the..no one ever asked me ; ;," lol.

Well, that's because the factors they are using deal with literacy rates and the average life span. Getting pregnant, and other life crises/hardships don't necessarily affect the mortality ratio. Suicide, yes...but I doubt it's such a high number as to seriously affect the rankings. That is, unless people are jumping off buildings and hanging themselves every 5 minutes...O_o

That may be right, I didn't consider the actual mass of people of that countries.

Yay Canada!!! We're always near the top. :D

Wait, doesn't Germany have a higher suicide rate than all of those countries? It's almost double Britains'!

It's a shame Algeria is never near the top, lol!

It seems to me to limit the scope to only two factors (life span and illiteracy) makes for somewhat dubious results.

Well life span and illiteracy are the only things mentioned at niger, there aren't any other factores named in that article but I think there are some more cause they always mentioned the "index" with every countries position but no explenation how to calculate it :/

I am confused then.

Look at the sentence after it. I didn't explain it very well but I mentioned the index ^^ What they did exactly is a secret to me but life span and illiteracy rate are part of it.

I dont trust the ranking based on only these 2 factors. Oh well home is where the heart is.

So, I should move to Norway? lol

Considering how much some of them change, it may not be number one by time you get there!

And I know this applies to some other coutries too, but the USA is so big and populated, it's practically a few countries in one! In other words, that ranking may change drastically depending on what part of the USA you live in.

I wouldn't move to any country just because it's on rank 1. People there might live longer, there aren't so many illitarated people, etc. (whatever is part of the index) but in every of those countries you can live a very good life and as Icewind said, things change a lot just take a look at position 23 and 6.

Here's a now ranking from the Mercer Institute. To me it's kinda supprising but since it's only the top 50 every city can be proud to be on the list since there are thousands of citys in this world^^ Hope you enjoy reading

News Release: 2010 Mercer Quality of Living survey

These rankings are absolutely useless! You never know which to trust, and sometimes you wonder if these people that work on the rankings have ever actually stepped foot in these cities and/or countries.

2010 Quality of Life Index: 194 Countries Ranked and Rated to Reveal the Best Places to Live – International Living

Look at this article for example! France has been first for the past 5 years! I've been living in France, Paris for 4 years now, and the way they describe Paris makes me think these people judged Paris from romantic movies, poems or stories! Life in Paris is nowhere near as glamorous as they say, unless of course you're a millionaire! In which case, you can make almost any city/town you live in to be glamorous!

I too think they`re really close to useless too. I`m sure those at the bottom of the list are going to be pretty crappy places, but really... Everyone has different criteria for judging where they want to live, and for what they would consider an ideal place to be.
I`ve only lived in one city in that top 50 ranking, but I didn`t particularly like it there and wouldn`t choose to live there again. (And in fact got out pretty quickly as it certainly didn`t come close to what I would consider a good standard of living.) Now I live in a city not even on that list, and absolutely love living here - everything I looked for in a place to settle down for life is here.

It`s all subjective, really.

Well they didn't judge any city by poems or something like that. They compared the job-markets, free-time-activity-offers, health system, etc. Nothing that can be seen from diffrent views. Well it could be they never stepped a food in it or city they prefer are ranked higher but I doubt that this is as useless as you think it is. Also this depends on the district you live in, some are just shit others are only for millionairs :D

I didn't say they did, I was merely pointing out that it was AS IF they saw a couple of movies or something when they describe it. The link I gave says they're using the following as criteria;

Cost of Living, Culture and Leisure, Economy, Environment, Freedom, Health, Infrastructure, Safety and Risk, and Climate.

As for the district, of course, but Paris in general isn't glamorous like that!

I think that you pointed out the problem with this way of judging cities with that final sentence.

Let us say that there is a wonderful city, great variety of stuff, etc - but there are more "millionaires" living there than another city (probably because of said variety of stuff). As the cost of living for a millionaire is going to be high, looking at the average cost of living for everyone in the city will give you a skewed perspective - You will think that living there costs more as there are people paying quite a lot... But in reality the majority of people could be living with a much lower cost of living.

.............
And I was going to go into more detail until I noticed something I had not noticed before.
This is a ranking for expatriates. And short term ones at that.
It doesn`t have anything to do with the quality of life for native or long term residents. It`s all about how much a city impresses someone with money who lives there for a short period of time, and how much they can be catered to.

Well, that puts it all into perspective. The places I would want to live cater more to long term residents (with more opportunities open to them) than someone just here on business for a few months wanting to be "entertained".