Monday, March 24, 2008

And the winner is...

If you are a prospective expat, considering a particular country or even various options, then a bit of research will not go amiss if only to confirm your own thoughts and experiences. So, where do you begin? Of course this blog is a good stopping-off point for some general discussion of life as an expat - you can also trawl the web with specific country searches - or even try the "I'm Feeling Lucky" option of a certain well-known search engine!

However, there is an interesting starting point, just recently up-dated, which could give you the inspiration for on-going research - the
Quality of Life Index 2008, published by International Living magazine. This rates different countries according to an impressive range of criteria, including cultural, social, environmental, climatic and economic factors, to arrive at comparative rankings - you can see the published chart here...


If you have already made your move, you may be interested to see how your country ranks - and if you agree! You could probably offer many suggestions as to why a country should rank differently and, of course, our decisions about moving country often arise from more than the very pragmatic considerations and can include sentimental and emotional factors that are hard to measure by any scale - so this kind of assessment can only ever be a helpful guide, to give us pointers to some key aspects of life in different countries.

That said, this seems to be a quite detailed survey and assessment and we are delighted to see that the number one spot is again retained by France...


4 comments:

tomshideaway said...

if they would just let me leave!!

Jane Turley said...

Well, I can't say I was surprised at finding the UK so low; everything seems to be going from bad to worse and the middle classes bearing the brunt of it. Sooo many of my friends are considering moving abroad it's unreal; a sad testimony to life in the UK at the moment.

Don't know if I could ever leave though...although a small holiday home could be an attractive proposition..

By the way thanks for the blog review; sorry it's a belated apology but I'm always running behind...well behind anyway; running is a bit of a problem these days!

Stella said...

I'm curious as to how they determine the cultural ranking. Wouldn't it be with an obvious "Western" bias?

Anonymous said...

Wow I was working for a big cruise line company and I have been to more than 60 countries... But never in England, how could I miss that.
Great blog you have here.