It’s official – France is the best place to live
2010 Quality of Life Index
To produce this annual index ‘International Living Magazine’ considered nine categories: Cost of Living, Culture and Leisure, Economy, Environment, Freedom, Health, Infrastructure, Safety and Risk, and Climate. This involved a lot of number crunching from “official” sources, including government websites, the World Health Organization, and The Economist, to name but a few. They also listened carefully to what their editors from all over the world had to say about the findings. Below is a summary of why France yet again won this year’s Quality of Life Index
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1. France
For the 5th year running, France takes first in the annual ‘Quality of Life Index’. No surprise! Its tiresome bureaucracy and high taxes are outweighed by an unsurpassable quality of life, including the world’s best health care. France always nets high scores in most categories. But you don’t need number-crunchers to tell you its bon vivant lifestyle is special. Make that trip from the UK, step off the plane and you’ll experience it first-hand. If only quality of life indicators could measure a country’s heart and soul. But it’s impossible to enumerate the joy of lingering for hours over dinner and a bottle of red wine in a Parisian brasserie, or sitting on the croisette in Cannes sipping an afternoon beverage watching the world go by. Perhaps strolling around one of the many hill top villages scattered throughout the South of France, such as Saint Paul de Vence. Romantic Paris offers the best of everything, services don’t fall away in the Cote d’Azur with its many coastal towns such as Antibes, Cannes and Nice…in wild and lovely Corsica…in lavender-scented Provence. Or in the Languedoc of the troubadours, bathed in Mediterranean sunlight. Provincial French properties and investment properties in the Cote d’Azur are often keenly priced and lifestyles are less expensive than Paris. The South East of France and the Cote d’Azur offers just about everything France has to offer in one sun drenched stretch of coast line – form Monaco to St Tropez. Property prices are great value at the moment, 2010 is a buyers market. A property investment in the South of France for someone living in the UK can offer solid rental yields and a steady capital appreciation. Cannes, Antibes and Nice have always been a favourite for the UK tourist – the airport in Nice is served well by budget airlines and is only a short 2 hour flight from London and many other European capitals. The towns of Antibes, Cannes and Nice offer excellent rental yields due to the quantity of tourists visiting this region of France every year. Cannes is even more attractive for rental yields due to the large number of congress throughout the year such as MIPIP, MIPCOM and of course the Cannes Film Festival in May each year.
So…………. who filled the other top spots?
2. Australia 3. Switzerland 4. Germany 5. New Zealand 6. Luxembourg 7. United States 8. Belgium 9. Canada 10. Italy 25. United Kingdom……..
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