Mercer Consulting has released the 2011 edition of its annual Quality of living survey, which aims to review the quality of living for expatriate employees in their host cities all around the world. This survey is carried out to assist multinationals and governments in assigning hardships allowances for personal relocated abroad. The survey is based on factors that expats consider to have an important impact on their quality of living, in their host city.

The 2011 edition reviews 221 cities, using 39 indicators to analyse the quality of living. These indicators are grouped within the 10 following categories: political and social environment, economic environment, socio-cultural environment, health and sanitation, schools and education, public services and transportation, recreation, consumer goods, housing and natural environment.

In this year’s edition, European cities still rank among the top cities. Vienna, Zürich and Auckland are the first three cities world-wide. Luxembourg is N° 19 in the final ranking, its position remaining unchanged since the two last editions (2009 and 2010).
The 2011 survey also features a new ranking named “personal safety”. It is based on criteria of internal stability, crime levels, law enforcement effectiveness and host country international relations. In this section, Luxembourg ranks 1st, followed by Berne and Helsinki.

http://www.odc.public.lu/actualites/2011/11/Mercer_2011/index.html