For the second year running, Vienna remains the most liveable city for 2019, based on the Global Liveability Index 2019 released on 4th September by the Economist Intelligence Unit. Australian cities Melbourne and Sydney claim the second and third spot respectively.
Photo of Vienna by Michal Jarmoluk from Pixabay
What is the Global Liveability Index 2019?
The Global Liveability Index 2019 is derived from a survey of 140 cities worldwide by the Economist Intelligence Unit, the research and analytics division of The Economist Group. The survey assesses living conditions of a city over 30 qualitative and quantitative factors across five broad categories: stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education and infrastructure.
Every city is awarded a rating for each of the factors and the ratings are then compiled and weighted to provide a score of 1-100, where 1 is considered intolerable and 100 is considered ideal. The liveability rating is provided both as an overall score and as a score for each of the five categories.
Categories of the Global Liveability Index 2019 and the supporting indicators
The Top Liveable Cities
The top liveable cities have very high overall ratings from 96.6 (Adelaide, tenth position) to 99.1 (Austria, first position) and have ratings of 100 in at least two of the five assessed categories.
Top 10 Most Liveable Cities (Interactive Tables). Data source:EIU
Struggling Cities
The least liveable cities in the Global Liveability Index 2019 have ratings of 30.7 (Damascus, Syria) to 46.9 (Caracas, Venezuela).
Least Liveable Cities (Interactive Tables). Data source:EIU
Who can benefit from this index?
The Global Liveability Index 2019 is useful for organizations to gauge the level of lifestyle comfort or challenges an employee will experience if he or she is to relocate to any of the surveyed cities. From this perspective, organizations can assess the city based on its stability, standard of health care, culture and environment, education and quality of infrastructure. The organization can then provide additional allowance or stipend for employees that is commensurate with the liveability score of the destination city.
Cost of Living
To make a complete decision on relocating to live in another city, organizations and individuals will also need to consider the cost of living, which includes the cost of housing and goods and services in the destination city. While the cost of living is not factored directly in the Global Liveability Index 2019 report, the Economist Intelligence Unit has another report, the Worldwide Cost of Living Survey, which ranks cities based on their relative expensiveness and cost of living.
For more information on the Global Liveability Index 2019, visit the Economist Intelligence Unit website at https://www.eiu.com/topic/liveability.
For more information on the Worldwide Cost of Living Survey, visit the Economist Intelligence Unit website at https://www.eiu.com/wcol
