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Why Choose France?

Why Choose France for your lifestyle change?

Reproduced from International Living Magazine - www.internationalliving.com The Annual Quality of Life Index - as investigated and compiled by International Living magazine annually have again (for the fifth year running) found La Belle France to be top of the hit parade and the best country in which to live in for quality of life for 2010.

1. France

For the fifth year running, France takes first in our 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. Step off a plane and you'll experience it first-hand.

I always wish 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 strolling beside the Seine on a spring morning, poking through the book vendors' wares. Or buying buttery croissants in bohemian Montmartre...hearing Notre Dame's bells...walking antique streets paved with poetry.

Romantic Paris offers the best of everything, but services don't fall away in Alsace's wine villages...in wild and lovely Corsica...in lavender-scented Provence. Or in the Languedoc of the troubadors, bathed in Mediterranean sunlight.

Provincial French properties are often keenly priced and lifestyles are less expensive than Paris. The Southwestern Midi-Pyrenees region is a particularly good hunting ground for village homes for less than $100,000-and classic three-course lunches for $14. Houses cascade with wisteria blossom; outdoor markets are everywhere. Foie gras, pink garlic, Armagnac, and crystallized violets aren't gourmet fare for locals. Rather, just another day's shopping.

How the scores panned out:

France
Cost of Living	55
Leisure & Culture	81
Economy	69
Environment	72
Freedom	100
Health	100
Infrastructure	92
Risk & Safety	100
Climate	87
Final Score	82

Learn how we calculate the Quality of Life Index scores

International Living's Quality of Life Index 2010:
Where the Numbers Come From

To produce the Quality of Life Index we consider 194 countries in nine categories:

Cost of Living
Culture and Leisure
Economy
Environment
Freedom
Health
Infrastructure
Safety and Risk
Climate

This involves number crunching thousands of pieces of data from official government sources, the World Health Organization, The Economist, and many other journals, tables, and records (see the full list of sources below)

But, we realize, you can't quantify quality of life by numbers alone. Quality of life relates to something broader. Opening your front door in the morning and being able to wiggle your toes in the sand may be more important to you than cost of living. You may rate good neighbors and good doctors above infrastructure in a country. Perhaps the state of the economy means less to you than the pleasure derived from watching a perfectly executed tango. It is for these reasons that, as well as using statistical data in our Quality of Life Index, we ask our far-flung editors and readers to tell us about their quality of life in the countries in which they have chosen to live.

Marks Out of 100

We present each country in each category graded on a curve-each country is scored relative to every other country. In each category you can see that the scores run 0 to 100. This means the country that gets 0 is the worst in that category, and the country that gets 100 is the best. We do this to make the Index easier to read-so, if a score is a low number or a high number, you know right away if that's a good or a bad thing.

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