A new report from ‘international living’ shows that, for the fifth year in succession, France is rated as the country with the highest quality of life in the world. This startingly impressive result is out of the 194 countries included in the survey, in which the US came third and the UK came about 20th.
Somalia, if you are interested, came bottom of the list of places you might like to live.
The survey takes into account a lot of different factors in the countries involved – cost of living, culture and leisure, economy, environment, freedom, health, infrastructure, safety and risk, and climate. These are all good and noble qualities in a country.
But before we celebrate France’s triumph let’s take a slightly closer look at these numbers, how they are arrived at and what they include and exclude. I think there are a couple of important problems faced by the organisation preparing the survey:
Problem number 1
In their description of why France came first they report ‘Its tiresome bureaucracy and high taxes are outweighed by an unsurpassable quality of life‘ and ‘it’s impossible to enumerate the joy of lingering for hours over dinner and a bottle of red wine in a Parisian brasserie, or strolling beside the Seine on a spring morning‘.
This is perhaps true, but dare I suggest it was written by someone who doesn’t actually deal with the bureaucracy or pay taxes, or run a business in France? Strolling along the Seine has little to do with quality of life in France for either the average French person or the average expat!
The reality is that the bureuacracy, taxes and poor service levels will occupy much more of your time than you spend ‘sipping wine in a Parisian brasserie’. Don’t get me wrong, we love living here in France for many reasons, including many of those on the list, and quite possibly it deserves its number one ranking, but the reality is not the same as the dream that many people, including the writers of the article, seem to have of life in France.
Problem number 2
Corruption doesn’t seem to get a mention at all. There are many countries, including some in western Europe, where I would not live because people tell me that getting anything done involves envelopes of cash being given to the right person, getting a job is impossible unless you have friends in the right places etc. I guess people in these countries get used to this but for me it would make quality of life very poor. So I would try and include this in a survey of ‘best places to live’.
Problem number 3
The survey seems quite distorted by certain factors such as population density and country size, which in turn affect lots of other things such as amount of infrastructure, length of railways per person etc For example, the ‘environment’ category looks at ‘population density per square kilometer’ as well as greenhouse gases produced.
As a result, for example, the US did quite well in the ‘environment’ category, came top for ‘infrastructure’ and rated pretty well for ‘weather’ – would that be Dallas or Seattle? The point isn’t that the survey is right or wrong, it’s that we all have a different idea of how important things are – I suspect most people outside the US would not award it many points for the environment. But it is a US survey!
For all these comments, a big ‘chapeau’ to all concerned for the amount of work and effort that must have been involved in puling the survey together. There is a great deal of interesting information about best places to live around the world to discover in the survey – see the results for all countries involved at worldwide quality of life and an explanation of how the numbers were arrived at here.
And of course three cheers for France for winning for the 5th year in succession!!
Very fair comment Boris. I believe the perfect place does not exsist. For me freedom of choice is the most important. It has been difficult for us living in Britain as this current government just wants to tell you what to do all the time, what you should drink, what you should eat. etc. etc. i cannot wait for them to go. However some ( many) people like being told what to do and how they should live their lives.
It was in Germany that if you want to fish you have to pass an exam. You had to allow the chimney sweeps into your house to check on things even if you have no chimney. You had to do everything in the prescribed way. it just gets you down when you lose freedom. My country of choice after Norfolk would be France but living and visiting are totaly different.I found this out in Metz it is just so controlled it was not for me.
Its like when our local council talk about their bins. I had to phone them up and tell them they are MY bins. i paid for them not them. They think we should serve them not the other way round.
Freedom is the MOST important thing. Everyone should resist the increasing state control of our lives
I agree, it is necessary to look at the criteria used before accepting the verdict and i suppose we all have differing views of which criteria are important for us.
What infuriates me is that France, with all that it has going for it, could be so much better….but isn’t.
Freedom of choice is everything, I am an Expat livinig in London UK that has migrated from Pakistan. I understand in countries like us, we have/had faced so many problems, corruption and so on, but I may safely say, here in the UK I am very happy, ofcourse happiness varies from one person to another, that what they call happiness, As far as the locals are concerned, they might not be very happy with the Government, but I as an expat, am very happy, luckily, just few months later I was in the UK, I have been selected by the UK’s most Respect Coach Company, where I provide consulting to airport pickup, airport transfer, coach hire, minibus hire and limo hire service related clients.
UK has helped me grow, learn, meet new people from all over the world, and I am happy here!
As far as the France is concerned, its one of the best destinations every, I feel.
Hi, thanks for posting your story. It’s always good to be reminded how lucky we are and how good we have it – it’s easy to look at our little problems and forget that so many people have much bigger problems to deal with. Thanks for reminding us and very good luck with your job.
Such a survey should involve opinions of French nationals and foreigners who’ve lived in France. Privileged to live in France for over 10 years, and a constant visitor for many years since, I’ve vote hands down in favor of France as the best place in the world to live. And yes, I’ve lived and worked in Spain, Lebanon, the Far East, S.E. Asia, Pacific Basin, Hawaii and mainland USA.
Ron, you’re right of course. Since the survey was organised by a group called International Living the focus was presumably more on great places for expats to live – but mostly I think the same criteria will apply to the nationals of the country. Nice to hear a vote for France from someone who knows so many other countries!
Hello Boris, Thank you for wishing me luck, Thanks. Hope you are well and your luck is working there too! all the best for 2010 for you, friends, family and your loved ones and for all readers and particepants here too.
Moreover, welcome on the board Ron, my story is not very different, as I have been living in countries like Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Turkey, Malaysia, May I say Iran, as well?
and have visited few countries in Europe too.
I myself am from New Zealand (Rated 5th) and think it should be revised other than just in January; since the recent disaster in Haiti, does it really deserve to be rated 179th? I think it should be reviewed and edited every month or so, so that it has the most recent results… Thanks! xox
Tina, I guess it’s quite a big job preparing the figures, and since it’s all quite subjective anyway I’m not sure how practical it would be to change them every month…
First off, I’d like to say France is definitely an awesome place to visit, especially with all of it’s richness and history, however, visiting France is definitely not the same as residing in France. I may agree that other cities in France have a better quality of life than here in Paris.
I’m currently living in Paris, France and I disagree w/the survey (or maybe I was just spoiled living in America). Unless you think quality of life = being told all the time that you can’t do this or can’t do that w/o a legitimate reasoning for why, or given the wrong info by a few different people when you call/ask the employees in the same building (if you can reach anyone), or being told off by rude employees, or buying things which you can’t return (if you buy it, it’s yours), or having the lady at the mairie fill out your form wrong 7 times because she’s half drunk from lunch taking a total of 2 hours just to do one form right, or being surrounded by angry drivers beeping and cutting you off, or dizzying round and round roads, which logistically make no sense, or being surrounded by people who smoke like a chimney everywhere you go, or very few, if any restrooms in even tourist areas and just about everywhere else, or living in homes w/no window screens, or like living in small apartments, with small furniture, small cars, tiny roads, tiny “sidewalks”, or if you like that you can’t even walk or jog w/o a diesel engine blowing out polution into your lungs…or the fact that even though it’s against the law, so many dog owners let their dogs run loose even in parks..yeah…so far that’s my experience of the quality of life in Paris.