Quality of Life Around the World: The Best and Worst Cities (Infographic) Thinking of sending some of your employees to work overseas? Be sure to know what you're getting into.
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If you are going to get employees to pack up and move to locations around the globe with less desirable living conditions than we have here in the U.S., prepare to pay up. Determining exactly how much to pay can be confusing, primarily because of the wide range of factors to consider.
That's where quality of living ranking specialists come in. Global consulting company Mercer examined the elements that make a location more or less comfortable to live in and then merged all of that data into one metric that can be compared apples to apples.
"Political instability, high crime levels, and elevated air pollution are a few factors that can be detrimental to the daily lives of expatriate employees and their families," said Slagin Parakatil, senior researcher at mercer, in a written statement. "To ensure that compensation packages reflect the local environment appropriately, employers need a clear picture of the quality of living in the cities where they operate."
Cities in Western Europe, including Vienna, Zurich and Munich, all rank high on the quality of living list, according to the infographic made by Column Five Media for Mercer. Meanwhile the lowest-ranking cities are located in especially poor countries throughout the world: Baghdad, Iraq, ranks the worst, while Bangui of the Central African Republic, and Port-au-Prince, Haiti, also came out at the bottom.
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For the ranking, Mercer uses New York City as a global benchmark. The Big Apple has 100 points and then cities are awarded either a higher or lower score.
Check out the infographic made by Column Five Media with Mercer's data (below) to see granular data on the quality of life in cities in Europe, Asia and North America.
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