Quality of Life Index
Beyond affordability - find where you truly thrive.
The Quality of Life Index measures the full spectrum of factors that determine whether you will genuinely thrive in a new destination - not just survive it. It captures the intangibles that define a life well-lived, from healthcare and walkability to cultural richness and social opportunity.
Cheap isn't enough. You're looking for a place where life is actually good.
Traditional platforms obsess over cost of living and visa ease, but they ignore the intangibles that make life worth living. They don't tell you whether the healthcare system will treat you well in an emergency, whether the city has the cultural energy to keep you engaged long-term, or whether the environment will affect your physical and mental health. The QLI was built to measure what most platforms don't: whether a destination will actually make you happier and healthier.
The QLI measures every factor that contributes to sustainable, long-term wellbeing - not just short-term excitement. It tells you whether a destination has the healthcare infrastructure to care for you if something goes wrong, the environmental quality to support your physical health, and the social and cultural richness to prevent the isolation that derails so many expat experiences.
8 Core Sub-Metrics
Each metric is individually sourced, validated, and weighted by our interdisciplinary team.
Walkability (25%)
How much of daily life is reachable on foot - pedestrian infrastructure and street-level connectivity
Safety Index (25%)
Composite safety of the city, from crime data and community-reported perception
Air Quality (20%)
Measured AQI, inverted - clean air lifts the score, heavy pollution drives it to zero
Public Transit (15%)
Coverage, reach, and everyday usability of the public transport network
Street Cleanliness (15%)
Ground-level upkeep of shared public space, from our city guide research
Methodology
The QLI is a weighted composite of five livability signals, each normalised to a 0-100 scale before weighting. Air quality is inverted, so a cleaner city scores higher on a measure where the raw reading runs the other way. Where an input is missing for a city, it is dropped and the remaining weights are renormalised rather than scored as zero - a gap in our data never pretends to be a bad result.
No formulas are published publicly. Our models are proprietary and continuously refined.
Who Benefits Most
Retirees
Find destinations where healthcare, environment, and lifestyle will support a healthy, fulfilling retirement
Families
Evaluate schools, safety, social opportunities, and health infrastructure for your whole household
Long-term Expats
Identify destinations where you won't hit the 6-month wall of boredom and social isolation
Lifestyle-Driven
Prioritize places where the quality of daily life genuinely exceeds what you have at home
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Start Using This Intelligence
Apply the QLI and all other OrbitLabX indices to any destination you're considering.