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Highlights from the 2010 Quality-of-Living Survey
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- European cities dominate the top 10 ranking for Quality of living, with Canada, New Zealand and Australia also featuring
- Vienna scores highest for overall quality of living, Baghdad the lowest
- Calgary is the world's top in our Eco-city ranking, followed by Honolulu, with Ottawa and Helsinki in joint 3rd place
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Vienna retains the top spot as the city with the world’s best quality of living, according to the Mercer 2010 Quality of Living Survey. Zurich and Geneva follow in second and third position, respectively, while Vancouver and Auckland remain joint fourth in the rankings.
European cities continue to dominate amongst the top 25 cities in the index. In the UK, London ranks at 39, while Birmingham is at 55 and Glasgow at 57. In the US, the highest ranking entry is Honolulu at position 31, followed by San Francisco at position 32. Singapore (28) is the top-scoring Asian city followed by Tokyo at 40. Baghdad, ranking 221, remains at the bottom of the list.
"Despite the economic downturn and companies’ efforts to contain costs, quality of living and hardship premiums remain important means of compensating expatriates for differences in living conditions. However, companies are more inclined to review the measurement of such allowances to ensure they are cost-effective," according to Slagin Parakatil, Senior Researcher at Mercer.
This year’s ranking also identifies the cities with the best eco-ranking based on water availability and drinkability, waste removal, quality of sewage systems, air pollution and traffic congestion. Calgary is at the top of this index (score 145.7), followed by Honolulu in second place (score 145.1) and Ottawa and Helsinki in joint third (score 139.9). Wellington in New Zealand (5), Minneapolis (6), Adelaide (7) and Copenhagen fill the next four slots, while Kobe, Oslo and Stockholm share ninth place. Port-au-Prince in Haiti ranks at the bottom of this table with a score of only 27.8 (see attached table).
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Global Mobility Webcast and Recordings
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Mercer regularly runs webcasts on a variety of expatriate management topics. Sign up for upcoming live webcasts and listen to those already recorded.
Upcoming webcasts
Recorded webcasts
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Related Products
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Mercer Passport®
MercerPassport contains valuable reference
information that will help expatriates learn what it’s really like to live in another
country. It provides the whole family with a clear understanding of how to appreciate
and adapt to life in a new location, as well as essential practical guidance about
moving abroad and acclimating to a new home.
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MercerPassport gives you access to:
- The world’s premier country guides, covering 92 major countries
- Quality-of-living information covering up to 285 cities across the globe
- The Work Permit portal, providing advice and sourcing work permits for accompanying spouses or partners
- Mercer’s CostAdvisor, a tool that compares the price of everyday items
- Exclusive news and articles by experts in the field
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Cost-of-Living Information Services
To encourage mobility and to manage your international assignment costs, you need
precise information to calculate fair, consistent expatriate compensation packages. Based
on over 200 goods and services, our semi-annual surveys are conducted by professional
researchers simultaneously in each of the 290 locations we cover. Carefully chosen
vendors reflect only those outlets where your expatriates can buy goods and services of
international quality.
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Key benefits and features include:
- A unique international basket of goods and services
- Three distinct cost-of-living (COL) indices for different expatriate shoppers
- An online Cost-of-Living Index Calculator that allows you to customise the COL index to your specific needs
- Reasonable, realistic indices
- Full price list and survey details
- Immediate estimation of the cost-of-living allowance (COLA) using our Cost-of-Living Allowance Calculator
- Current information, with locations extensively surveyed twice a year by professional researchers
- More frequent updates for markets in flux
- Special cities surveyed upon request
- A methodology that lets you determine competitive purchasing power for all your employees
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International Assignments Survey
Find out how leading multinational
companies worldwide address the expatriate management issues you are facing.
Transferring employees abroad, for short-term, long-term or permanent assignments, is
more challenging than ever before. Aligning your company’s practices and policies with
the best practices in the market place is critical to the success of your international
assignment program.
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Consider these questions:
- What are the latest trends in international assignment policies around the world?
- Should you enforce a uniform global policy for transfers or vary your policies by transfer type?
- How should you set mobility premiums?
- How should you compensate "commuting" employees?
- How should you handle housing expenses like utilities?
- What should your education allowance cover?
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Global Pay Summary
Designed as a valuable aid for busy HR professionals, Mercer’s Global Pay Summary (GPS) provides current, reliable pay information from around the world at a glance.
GPS reports cover 63 countries and are available in four regional volumes: the Americas; Asia Pacific; Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa; and Western Europe. These concise reports help you to stay up to date with global salary trends, enabling fast, informed decision making without the need to refer to complex surveys or unwieldy databases.
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Consider these questions:
- How do salaries compare for R&D engineers in the Asia Pacific?
- What do Western European company heads typically earn in annual base salary?
- Do marketing managers earn more in annual total cash compensation in Malaysia or Japan?
- What salary might a head of IT expect if you were recruiting one for a move between countries?
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