Perfect Score
Date: 01/03/2007
International Living Postcards-- your daily escape
Thursday, Jan. 4, 2007
For more than 25 years, we've helped you find a new way of life through retiring, investing, and living full- and part-time overseas. Why? Because we believe you can live better…for less…travel farther…have a lot more fun…and maybe make a lot of money…when you expand your world beyond home shores.
Our best tool to help identify your ideal destination is our annual Quality of Life Index. Three days ago we released the 2007 Quality of Life Index.
Once a year, every January, we consider not only the places that offer particular and timely opportunities for the would-be expatriate…but nearly every nation on earth. This year, our survey looks at 193 countries.
Subscribers to the print edition of International Living can review the full report here: http://www.qualityoflife2007.com. Meantime, here are a few of the highlights.
To produce this annual Index we consider, for each country, nine categories: Cost of Living, Culture and Leisure, Economy, Environment, Freedom, Health, Infrastructure, Safety and Risk, and Climate.
Overall, the United States is the fifth best place in the world to live. It's true, the U.S. is one big, convenient, comfortable, safe, even cheap place to be. You can do anything, go anywhere, buy anything anytime. But where's the fun in that? Convenience and comfort are highly over-rated, and though the living may be good Stateside…it can be much better in many ways elsewhere…like in the four countries beating the U.S. to the top spots. I won't name them here, but I will say it wasn't a close call--these fantastic four comfortably beat the U.S.
No one country gets a perfect score overall in the Quality of Life Index; that would be impossible. But Italy gets a perfect score in the Culture and Leisure category. This country, in its history, has given us Michaelangelo, Raphael, and Botticelli. Pizza, gondolas, and scarlet Ferraris. Opera, ice cream, and Prada handbags. OK, they've given us the Mafia, too, but who isn't tempted by the charms of Italy, Europe's most intriguing and seductive country?
Italy's landscapes are as memorable as they are diverse. Historic walled towns, timeless villages crowning little hilltops like tiaras, and fields cove red with bright yellow sunflowers.
Gnarled olive groves and lemon, orange, and almond trees…golden beaches and jewel-like Alpine lakes…romantic, mysterious islands…smoldering Mount Etna…the glittering peaks of the snow-cove red Alps and the Dolomites. Italy is said to hold more than half the world's cultural riches (and the most heritage sites in the world) within its borders. We don't doubt it.
The only other perfect score awarded this year was in the Health category. This country has the best overall health care system in the world. Life expectancy now averages 83 years for women and 76 for men. In the past 10 years, the number of people living over the age of 100 has doubled, with 6,840 people reaching the three-digit mark.
The world's strongest economy? Ireland. This Emerald Isle, which comes 29th in our Index this year, has enjoyed a booming economy over the past decade. The Economist rated it as the best country in the world to live in 2006. It loses points in our Index in the Climate and Cost of Living categories. In our opinion, today's Ireland, though still rugged and friendly, is one of the most expensive countries in the world (you'll pay $76 per square foot to rent commercial space in the central business district). And the amount of rain we've had over the past month is, quite frankly, depressing.
The cheapest place you'd want to live? Uruguay. Best climate? Malta.
But getting back to the fantastic four, those four mysterious countries who topped out the 2007 Quality of Life Index…who are they? I'll leave you with this clue: I haven't yet mentioned any of them in this Postcard.
Subscribers to the print edition of International Living have known for days who the winners, losers, movers, and shakers are in this year's Index. If you're not a subscriber, you can become one here and get instant access to the 2007 Quality of Life Index.
Laura Sheridan
Editor, IL's Quality of Life Index
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