High Standard of Living

Within last decade Australia became one of the best countries to live. Plenty job opportunities together with low unemployment around 5%, no recession over last 20 years, demand for skilled workers made this country a great choice for people considering moving to Australia.

In Mercer’s Quality of Living Survey 2012 five Australian cities were ranked among 30 best cities to live worldwide.

Mercer, the global consulting corporation evaluates local living conditions in more than 460 cities it surveys worldwide. It analyzes living conditions according to 39 factors, grouped in 10 categories:

• Political and social environment (political stability, crime, law enforcement)
• Economic environment (currency exchange regulations, banking services)
• Socio-cultural environment (censorship, limitations on personal freedom)
• Medical and health considerations (medical supplies and services, infectious diseases, waste disposal, air pollution, etc.)
• Schools and education (standard and availability of international schools)
• Public services and transportation (electricity, water, public transportation, traffic congestion, etc.)
• Recreation (restaurants, theatres, movie theatres, sports and leisure, etc.)
• Consumer goods (availability of food/daily consumption items, cars, etc.)
• Housing (rental housing, household appliances, furniture, maintenance services)
• Natural environment (climate, record of natural disasters)

In financial magazine, The Economist, Australia ranked 2nd best country to be born in 2013 after Switzerland (below). The factors taken in the account in the survey were:

• “material wellbeing” as measured by GDP per head life expect­ancy from birth
• quality of family life, based primarily on divorce rates
• state of political freedoms
• job se­curity (measured by the unemployment rate)
• climate
• personal physical security ratings (based primarily on recorded homicide rates and ratings for risk from crime and terrorism)
• quality of community life (based on membership in so­cial organizations)
• governance (measured by ratings for corruption)
• gender equality (measured by the share of seats in parliament held by women)