Hyderabad Tops Quality Of Living Index In India, Vienna In The World

Hyderabad emerged as the Indian city with the best quality of living for the third consecutive time.

While Hyderabad maintained its ranking at the national-level, it slipped five points below its previous score. Overall, Indian cities have performed poorly in the survey. Hyderabad, India’s best-faring city on the list, is ranked 139 – 5 places lower than last year. Furthermore, Pune and Bengaluru have both slipped by one rank to 145 and 146, respectively, in this year’s ranking.

Who compiled the list?

The analysis was done by Mercer, a New York-based global human resources consulting firm. It releases the Quality of Living rankings on an annual basis.

The survey involved 231 cities and is done annually. It helps companies and organisations determine compensation and hardship allowances for international staff. It uses dozens of criteria such as political stability, health care, education, crime, recreation and transport.

The 2017 list was the 19th of its kind. It can be read here.

Key takeaways

According to Mercer, despite increased political and financial volatility in Europe, many of its cities offer the world’s highest quality of living and remain attractive destinations for expanding business operations and sending expatriates on assignment.

City infrastructure, ranked separately this year, plays an important role when multinationals decide where to establish locations abroad and send expatriate workers. Easy access to transportation, reliable electricity, and drinkable water are all important considerations when determining hardship allowances based on differences between a given assignee’s home and host locations.

Vienna occupies first place for overall quality of living for the 8th year running, with the rest of the top-ten list mostly filled by European cities like Zurich, Munich, Frankfurt, Geneva, and Copenhagen. The only non-European cities in the top ten are Auckland (3) and Vancouver (5).

The highest ranking cities in Asia and Latin America are Singapore (25) and Montevideo (79), respectively.