Luxembourg stands out as the European leader in quality of life for 2025, achieving a score of 220 on the Quality of Life Index. The Netherlands follows closely behind with 211 points, while Albania and Ukraine rank at the bottom with scores of 104 and 115 respectively. This index provides a thorough assessment of living conditions across Europe, reflecting various factors that shape the overall well-being of populations and extending beyond purely economic metrics. Understanding the quality of life index The quality of life index is a multifaceted measure that incorporates factors such as purchasing power, pollution levels, housing affordability, cost of living, safety, healthcare quality, traffic conditions, and climate, to measure the overall quality of life of a Country. Higher overall index scores indicate better living conditions. However, in subindexes such as pollution, cost of living, and traffic commute time, lower values correspond to improved quality of life. Challenges affecting life satisfaction Despite the fact that European countries register high levels of life quality by for example leading the ranking of happiest countries in the world, life satisfaction across the European Union has been on a downward trend since 2018. The EU's overall life satisfaction score dropped from 7.3 out of 10 in 2018 to 7.1 in 2022. This decline can be attributed to various factors, including the COVID-19 pandemic and economic challenges such as high inflation. Rising housing costs, in particular, have emerged as a critical concern, significantly affecting quality of life. This issue has played a central role in shaping voter priorities for the European Parliamentary Elections in 2024 and becoming one of the most pressing challenges for Europeans, profoundly influencing both daily experiences and long-term well-being.

Quality of Life Index (higher is better) is an estimation of overall quality of life by using an empirical formula which takes into account purchasing power index (higher is better), pollution index (lower is better), house price to income ratio (lower is better), cost of living index (lower is better), safety index (higher is better), health care index (higher is better), traffic commute time index (lower is better) and climate index (higher is better).

Current formula (written in Java programming language):

index.main = Math.max(0, 100 + purchasingPowerInclRentIndex / 2.5 - (housePriceToIncomeRatio * 1.0) - costOfLivingIndex / 10 + safetyIndex / 2.0 + healthIndex / 2.5 - trafficTimeIndex / 2.0 - pollutionIndex * 2.0 / 3.0 + climateIndex / 3.0);

For details how purchasing power (including rent) index, pollution index, property price to income ratios, cost of living index, safety index, climate index, health index and traffic index are calculated please look up their respective pages.

Formulas used in the past

Formula used between June 2017 and Decembar 2017

We decided to decrease weight from costOfLivingIndex in this formula:

index.main = Math.max(0, 100 + purchasingPowerInclRentIndex / 2.5 - (housePriceToIncomeRatio * 1.0) - costOfLivingIndex / 5 + safetyIndex / 2.0 + healthIndex / 2.5 - trafficTimeIndex / 2.0 - pollutionIndex * 2.0 / 3.0 + climateIndex / 3.0);

The World Happiness 2017, which ranks 155 countries by their happiness levels, was released at the United Nations at an event celebrating International Day of Happiness on March 20th. The report continues to gain global recognition as governments, organizations and civil society increasingly use happiness indicators to inform their policy-making decisions. Leading experts across fields – economics, psychology, survey analysis, national statistics, health, public policy and more – describe how measurements of well-being can be used effectively to assess the progress of nations. The reports review the state of happiness in the world today and show how the new science of happiness explains personal and national variations in happiness.

The scores are based on answers to the main life evaluation question asked in the poll. This question, known as the Cantril ladder, asks respondents to think of a ladder with the best possible life for them being a 10 and the worst possible life being a 0 and to rate their own current lives on that scale. The scores are from nationally representative samples for 2017 and use the Gallup weights to make the estimates representative. The columns following the happiness score estimate the extent to which each of six factors – economic production, social support, life expectancy, freedom, absence of corruption, and generosity – contribute to making life evaluations higher in each country than they are in Dystopia, a hypothetical country that has values equal to the world’s lowest national averages for each of the six factors. They have no impact on the total score reported for each country, but they do explain why some countries rank higher than others.

Quality of life index, link: https://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/indices_explained.jsp

Happiness store, link: https://www.kaggle.com/unsdsn/world-happiness/home

Title: Top Cities Worldwide: Quality of Life Index 2024 Subtitle: Ranking the World's Best Cities for Living Based on Key Metrics

Source of Data: The dataset was collected from Numbeo.com, a publicly accessible database that provides data on various quality-of-life indicators across cities worldwide. Numbeo aggregates user-contributed data validated through statistical methods to ensure reliability.

Data Collection Method: Data was acquired through web scraping. Care was taken to follow ethical web scraping practices, adhering to Numbeo’s terms of service and respecting their robots.txt file.

Columns Description:

The dataset includes the following columns:

• Rank: City ranking based on the Quality of Life Index.
• City: Name of the city.
• Country: Country where the city is located.
• Quality of Life Index: Overall index measuring quality of life, calculated based on various sub-indices.
• Purchasing Power Index: Measures relative purchasing power in the city.
• Safety Index: Indicates how safe the city is based on crime rates.
• Health Care Index: Reflects the quality and accessibility of healthcare services.
• Cost of Living Index: Represents the cost of living, including housing, food, and transportation.
• Property Price to Income Ratio: A measure of housing affordability, calculated as the ratio of property prices to average incomes.
• Traffic Commute Time Index: Average time spent commuting within the city.

Limitations and Considerations:

• User-Generated Data: Since data on Numbeo is user-contributed, it may be subject to biases.
• Data Update Frequency: As Numbeo updates its data regularly, the dataset represents a snapshot in time and may require periodic updates.

Usage Note: The dataset is intended for research and analytical purposes. Users should verify the data's applicability for their specific use cases, considering the limitations mentioned above.

Poland received **** points for its internet security in 2023, ranking tenth by that indicator among 121 countries. The score for the electronic infrastructure was measured at **** points. In terms of the overall Digital Quality of Life Index score, the country ranked in the top five among Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries.

In 2023, Hungary reached a moderate quality of life index, scoring 132.13 points. From all the aspects of living taken into consideration, the low purchasing power and the high property price-to-income ratio were the least favorable.

Digital Quality of Life

Besides the Quality of Life Index, the Digital Quality of Life Index also plays an important role: measuring the country’s level and quality of digitalization. Levels of e-security, e-infrastructure, e-government, internet quality, and internet affordability are compared. The country’s e-security index totaled the highest with 0.84 points out of one, while e-infrastructure followed closely with 0.82 points. By contrast, Hungarian internet affordability reached only 0.1 index points out of one.

Happiness as an indicator

Happiness is a factor that is influenced by the quality of life. GDP, social support, life expectancy, and freedom are among the factors that influence one’s perceived happiness. In 2022, many countries that score highest on the list of happiest countries worldwide are Nordic countries such as Finland (7.8) and Denmark (7.59) but others, like Israel (7.47) and the Netherlands (7.4) are also high on the list. Out of CEE countries, Czechia scores the highest with 6.85 out of 10 points.

According to the 2024 Digital Quality of Life index covering 121 countries, India's rank dropped to **, scoring an average of **** points across five digital aspects. While the country moved up the ranks on the internet affordability and electronic security pillars that year, it saw a decline across the other three aspects that had been its strength in 2023.

The OECD's Better Life Index allows users to compare wellbeing across countries based on 11 topics identified as determinants for material living conditions and quality of life: housing, income, jobs, community, education, environment, civic engagement, health, life satisfaction, safety, and work-life balance. Each topic is based on one to three indicators, and the indicators are averaged with equal weights.

The average for 2024 based on 138 countries was 5.56 points. The highest value was in Finland: 7.74 points and the lowest value was in Afghanistan: 1.72 points. The indicator is available from 2013 to 2024. Below is a chart for all countries where data are available.

In 2023, Ghana obtained **** points in the Digital Quality of Life index, ranking it ** out of 117 countries worldwide. The score increased compared to the previous year when it stood at **** points. This indicates a worsening quality of digital wellbeing in the country.

According to the development economics, per-capita measures of National Income and lately Quality of Life Index were considered as indices of development or wellbeing of a society. These orthodox indices of economic development appear as incomplete, disputed and sometimes non-comprehensive and misleading too. United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP’s) well-known Human Development Index (HDI) is basically a universally accepted measure of the quality of life of human being. Beside this an Inequality-adjusted HDI (IHDI) and a Gender Inequality Index (GII) are constructed separately in HDR 2011. But yet there is no single index which will be able to capture the basic dimensions of quality of life with existing inequality and gender discrimination altogether. Not only providing these attainments but also the socio-political environment of the economy where these facilities are being provided is very much important in the question of quality of life of an economy. The most important drawback of HDI is that it does not consider human rights as the component of human development. Hence in this research work, the focus will be on the construction of a modified Quality of Life Index (QLI).A more comprehensive single modified QLI, viz., Modified Borda Score (MBS), will be constructed representing inequality-adjusted, gender-inequality-adjusted quality of life capturing all the major components of human development approach specially also the rights component. And also we apply this newly constructed modified index MBS to South Asian countries for the year 2013 with secondary data set. We also analyze the results comparing ranking on MBS and that on some other important indexes.

According to the survey, as of February 2023, four out of the six countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council ranked amongst the top ** in the world for expatriate quality of life. Qatar and the United Arab Emirates topped the list for quality of life, whereas Saudi Arabia and Kuwait came last in the region. Quality of life; an amalgamation of many metrics Since quality of life is dependent on many indicators, it can give us a good insight into many aspects of state welfare policies and services. Saudi Arabia, where the number of foreign workers in the private sector topped *** million, also ranked as having one of the region's lowest quality of life for expatriates. Qatar, which had the second-highest quality of life for expatriates living in the GCC, was ranked as one of the most challenging countries in the region for ease of settling in. The UAE and Qatar, both of which ranked the highest in the survey, also have the highest average salaries and living standards in the region. Foreign workers are a key pillar of the GCC economy Countries in the GCC all have sizable expatriate populations for which their economies are heavily reliant. Roughly ********** of the workforce in the GCC is foreign. Although the share of foreign workers in the GCC has slightly decreased in recent years, they still considerably outweigh the local workforce. Most of these workers comprise the unskilled portion of the occupational category in the GCC. However, with diversifying investments and programs such as Vision 2030, countries have seen a rise in the number of skilled foreign workers.

In 2022, Tunisia registered **** points in the Digital Quality of Life index. The country obtained the highest scores in the e-infrastructure and e-government pillars, with **** points and **** points, respectively. These pillars, therefore, contributed the most to the overall score.

Purpose: The article examines specific factors of socio-economic development in the context of national security. The purpose of the current work is to identify the connections between selected indicators of socio-economic development and the level of national security, in the context of improving the quality of life for all citizens. Design/Methodology/Approach: The process of globalization has caused changes that manifest in various spheres of human life. One of the main positive aspects of the globalization process, which affects the quality of human life, is regional development. This can be measured using selected socio-economic indicators. Findings: Regional development is not the only factor that affects the quality of human life. Negative aspects of the socio-economic development process, such as illegal migration and the overall increase in crime, have made the issue of national security extremely relevant for every country. Practical Implications: One of the numerous aspects of national security that negatively affects the quality of human life, as well as the overall perception of the globalization process, is migration and the crimes committed by foreigners in certain countries. Originality/Value: Since the goal of socio-economic development is to improve the quality of human life, it is also necessary in this context to address the security issues of each citizen in a given country, which, overall, is a component of national security.

Social scientists have been interested in measuring the prosperity, well-being, and quality of life of nations, which has resulted in a multiplicity of country-level indicators. However, little is known about the factor structure of these indicators. We explored the structure of quality of life, using country-level data on tens of subjective and objective indicators. Applying factor analysis, we identified three distinct factors that exhibited both overlap and complementarity. This structure was replicated in data from previous years and with a partially different set of variables. The first factor, ‘socio-economic progress’, is dominated by socio-political and economic indicators but also includes life satisfaction, which thus appears to reflect objective living conditions. The second factor, ‘psycho-social functioning’, consists of subjective indicators, such as eudaimonic well-being and positive affective states. The third, ‘negative affectivity’, comprises negatively-valenced affective states. The three macro-factors of societal quality of life demonstrated moderate intercorrelations and differential associations with cultural and ecological variables, providing support for their discriminant validity. Finally, country and regional rankings based on the three societal factors revealed a complex picture that cautions against over-reliance on any single indicator such as life satisfaction. The results underline the need for a broadly-based approach to the measurement of societal quality of life, and provide an empirically-derived multidimensional framework for conceptualizing and measuring quality of life and well-being at country level. This study is thus an initial empirical step towards systematizing the multiple approaches to societal quality of life.

In a 2024, global evaluation called the Digital Quality of Life index covering 121 countries, the Philippines scored an average of **** points in five digital aspects. Electronic infrastructure and e-government were the country's strengths.

The average for 2024 based on 7 countries was 6.58 points. The highest value was in Canada: 6.9 points and the lowest value was in Japan: 6.06 points. The indicator is available from 2013 to 2024. Below is a chart for all countries where data are available.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Social and Welfare Statistics (previously Social Expenditure Database) available via the UK Data Service includes the following databases:

The OECD Social Expenditure Database (SOCX) has been developed in order to serve a growing need for indicators of social policy. It includes reliable and internationally comparable statistics on public and mandatory and voluntary private social expenditure at programme level. SOCX provides a unique tool for monitoring trends in aggregate social expenditure and analysing changes in its composition. The main social policy areas are as follows: old age, survivors, incapacity-related benefits, health, family, active labour market programmes, unemployment, housing, and other social policy areas.

The Income Distribution database contains comparable data on the distribution of household income, providing both a point of reference for judging the performance of any country and an opportunity to assess the role of common drivers as well as drivers that are country-specific. They also allow governments to draw on the experience of different countries in order to learn "what works best" in narrowing income disparities and poverty. But achieving comparability in this field is also difficult, as national practices differ widely in terms of concepts, measures, and statistical sources.

The Child Wellbeing dataset compare 21 policy-focussed measures of child well-being in six areas, chosen to cover the major aspects of children’s lives: material well being; housing and environment; education; health and safety; risk behaviours; and quality of school life.

The Better Life Index: There is more to life than the cold numbers of GDP and economic statistics. This Index allows you to compare well-being across countries, based on 11 topics the OECD has identified as essential, in the areas of material living conditions and quality of life.

The Social Expenditure data were first provided by the UK Data Service in March 2004.

BackgroundGeneric health-related quality of life instruments, such as the EQ-5D, are increasingly used by countries to monitor population health via general population health surveys. Our aim was to demonstrate analytic options to measure socio-demographic differences in self-reported health using the EuroQol Group's archive of EQ-5D-3L population surveys that accumulated over the past two decades.MethodsAnalyses captured self-reported EQ-5D-3L data on over 100,000 individuals from 18 countries with nationally representative population surveys. Socio-demographic indicators employed were age, sex, educational level and income. Logistic regression odds ratios and the health concentration index methodology were used in the socio-demographic analysis of EQ-5D-3L data.ResultsStatistically significant socio-demographic differences existed in all countries (p < 0.01) with the EQ VAS based health concentration index varying from 0.090 to 0.157 across countries. Age had generally the largest contributing share, while educational level also had a consistent role in explaining lower levels of self-reported health. Further analysis in a subset of 7 countries with income data showed that, beyond educational level, income itself had an additional significant impact on self-reported health. Among the 5 dimensions of the EQ-5D-3L descriptive system, problems with usual activities and pain/discomfort had the largest contribution to the concentration of overall self-assessed health measured on the EQ VAS in most countries.ConclusionThe EQ-5D-3L was shown to be a powerful multi-dimensional instrument in the analyses of socio-demographic differences in self-reported health using various analytic methods. It offered a unique insight of inequalities by health dimensions.

The Quality of Nationality Index reflects the level of well-being, freedom, and opportunities available to citizens of different countries. It takes into account factors such as access to education, healthcare, human rights, and economic opportunities.

The Human Development Index (HDI) was developed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in the Human Development Report 1990 to measure the level of economic and social development of the United Nations member countries. The HDI is a composite indicator based on three basic variables: life expectancy, educational attainment and quality of life, and is calculated according to a certain methodology. "The One Belt One Road (OBOR) human development resilience dataset is a comprehensive indicator of human development resilience in each country. "The human development resilience dataset for countries along the Belt and Road is a comprehensive diagnosis based on sensitivity and adaptability analysis using year-by-year data of the Human Development Index for countries along the Belt and Road from 2000 to 2020. The Human Development Resilience Indicator (HDRI) data was prepared based on sensitivity and adaptation analysis. Please refer to the documentation for the methodology of preparing the dataset. "The Human Development Resilience Dataset for countries along the Belt and Road is an important reference for analysing and comparing the current state of human development resilience in each country.