Best Places to Live in the World

Over the past few weeks we have reviewed the Top 5 Best Places to Live in the World according to International Living Magazine's Quality of Life Index. It's time for a bit of a recap and perhaps a Big Picture view of this list.

First the recap -

The Top 5 Leading Countries for Quality of Life in 2011 are -

#1 - The United States - this year hits the top as the Best Place to Live in the World
#2 - New Zealand
#3 - Malta
#4 - France
#5 - Monaco

Now let's back up and take a look at the 'Big Picture' meaning the top 20 countries -

The Top 20 Countries for Quality of Life in 2011 -

#6 Belgium
#7 Japan
#8 The United Kingdom (UK)
#9 Austria
#10 Germany
#11 Netherlands
#12 Portugal
#13 Australia
#14 Andorra
#15 Italy
#16 Norway
#17 Argentina
#18 Hungary
#19 Slovenia
#20 Spain

Each year International Living rates and ranks almost every habitable country in the world to determine which ones offer the best Quality of Life. The overall ranking (Top 20 listed above) are ranked based on their average total score across nine different categories - Economy; Cost of Living; Culture; Environment; Health Care; Freedom; Infrastructure, Climate and Safety. Each country is rated from 1 to 100 on each of those categories. It's not just a few I.L. contributors sitting around a table and making subjective assessments, no they use official data and stats from different sources like - W.H.O. (the World Health Organization); Governments (like Statistics Canada); UNESCO and others.