Quality Of Life Index 2010

Many New Zealanders will be disappointed to hear that the country has only been placed fifth in this year's International Living magazine's Quality of Life index. Australia, its nearest and dearest neighbor has been placed second with France taking the top accolade.
Top 10 list
1. France
2. Australia
3. Switzerland
4. Germany
5. New Zealand
6. Luxembourg
7. USA
8. Belgium
9. Canada
10. Italy

We've been through the individual rankings for each of the parameters the 194 countries were measured against: Cost of Living, Culture and Leisure, Economy, Environment, Freedom, Health, Infrastructure, Safety and Risk, and Climate and we've compared NZ's scores with other countries and their placement on the list shown here.

Cost of living
63rd. NZ's worst individual score! Despite NZ marketing often itself as having a low cost of living it ranked the same as Canada, Panama and Costa Rica.

Leisure and culture
17th on the ranked list, putting it on a par with a host of countries including Australia, South Korea and the UK.

Economy
NZ is often perceived as a financially astute and secure country but it wallows in at 25th place, way behind Australia, Singapore and the United States, comparable to the UK which is still in recession and Brazil.

Environment
Surely NZ should score well on this I hear you ask? not as well as you think - only 29th, Brunei takes the top honours, whilst NZ scores the same as Zimbabwe, Cuba and a few others.

Freedom
We're all expecting a high ranking here and plenty of countries get full marks, including NZ.

Health
NZ does well with its health score and is placed 9th alongside Belgium.
 
Infrastructure
19th, could do better. Australia, Canada and the UK (all compete with NZ for skilled migrants) are placed higher. NZ fares only slightly better than Singapore and not as well as Denmark.
 
Risk and Safety
Most countries not currently fighting a war on their own soil do well here and score 100%

Climate
Zimbabwe takes top honors, NZ is comparable to Japan at joint 25th and the US, all are lower than Australia, Italy and France.

In summary, other than sharing the top scores for Freedom and Risk and Safety with many other countries, NZ seems to score its best marks for Health. The countries that do better are, France with an astonishing 100%, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Norway, Germany, Malta and Japan.



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