Quality of Living, for the purposes Mercer’s survey, analysis, and city rankings, differs from “quality of life.” Quality of life may involve a subjective assessment or opinion about one’s personal state and circumstances in a given city, but Mercer’s criteria for Quality of Living are objective, neutral and unbiased. Our objective system measures the quality of living for expatriates based on 39 criteria grouped into 10 key categories. We weigh each category to reflect its importance for overall quality of living. We assess the degree to which expatriates enjoy the standard of living in each host location, factoring in the interaction of political, socio-economic and environmental factors in the host location.
For Mercer’s Quality of Living rankings, New York serves as the base city. All other cities are ranked in relation to it.
This table shows the categories and criteria that Mercer quantifies for each city:
- European cities dominate worldwide Quality of Living ranking, with cities in Australia, New Zealand and Canada also ranked highly. Singapore is the first Asian city in the Top 25, at 25.
- Vienna is No. 1 in the Quality of Living ranking.
- Luxembourg tops our Personal Safety ranking, with Bern and Helsinki following.
- Baghdad has the lowest quality of living among the 221 cities we ranked and is also last in the Personal Safety ranking.
Source: MERCER
Quality of Living ranking 2011
Quality of Living ranking 2010