General living standards

The survey was conducted by the U.S.-based William M. Mercer consulting company and released this past week. It was designed to help companies assess general living standards in cities where they may have employees, named Vancouver, Zurich, Vienna, Bern and Sydney as the cities with the highest quality of life in the world. Among the three Baltic cities, Vilnius ranked the highest, in 90th place—just below Prague, Jerusalem and Warsaw; Riga was just behind the Lithuanian capital in 91st place. Tallinn came in 106th. Kiev was in 159th place and Moscow, 162nd. The consulting company said they considered some 39 different criteria in coming up with their rankings, including levels of health care, the environment, political and economic stability, and nightlife. Among other cities ranked, were Helsinki in 9th place, Stockholm in 27th and London in 35th place. The four countries in last place were Baghdad, Khartoum, Pointe Noire and, in the 218th position, Brazzaville. Below is the full ranking list. New York was used as the baseline in the pointing system, with 100 points.