There is a ton of various statistical data out there. Tey are available to anyone with internet and a basic knowledge of mathematics. There is Big Mac index, Obesity index, Hapiness index and may more. We travel for fun, we marry for love and visit tons of places.

Is there a perfect place for living? I decided to dig a little into the statistics, combine results and weight in my life values. Starting from the individual rankings to complex table of Best countries for living, by my personal preferences. Here we go…

Where is the happiest place

There is actually a ranking of countries by Hapiness. A group of individuals validate several factors in order to compare the living situation in various countries. Factors weighet in are by their own words:

“Income, health, having someone
to count on, having a sense of
freedom to make key life decisions,
generosity, and the absence of
corruption all play strong roles in
supporting life evaluations.”

Top 20 Countries by Hapiness Index 2023

Ranking	Country name
1	Finland
2	Denmark
3	Iceland
4	Israel
5	Netherlands
6	Sweden
7	Norway
8	Switzerland
9	Luxembourg
10	New Zealand
11	Austria
12	Australia
13	Canada
14	Ireland
15	United States
16	Germany
17	Belgium
18	Czech Republic
19	United Kingdom
20	Lithuania

Source: https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2023/#appendices-and-data

Where people make the most money

Some people could say that money buys hapiness. I observed that “rich countries” rank rather higher in the Hapiness index so I followed into detail what had such a big influence on the ranking. It is obvious that a productive country can really invest in what is reasonable, develop all sorts of services and offers of its inhabitants. Historically, with wide variety of options grows income. It is a game of neverending in-out chasing. As you can see, some of the countries have made both lists, so far.

Top 20 Countries by Income

Ranking	Country	Median Income	Mean Income	GDP Per Capita (PPP)
1	Luxembourg	$26 321	$31 376	$12 459
2	United Arab Emirates	$24 292	$27 017	$70 089
3	Norway	$22 684	$25 272	$70 005
4	Switzerland	$2 149	$25 787	$72 376
5	United States	$19 306	$25 332	$65 297
6	Canada	$18 652	$22 042	$51 668
7	Austria	$18 405	$20 718	$60 418
8	Sweden	$17 625	$20 193	$56 632
9	Denmark	$17 432	$20 304	$62 089
10	Netherlands	$17 154	$1 969	$61 285
11	Australia	$17 076	$21 329	$53 381
12	Iceland	$17 017	$193	$60 132
13	Germany	$16 845	$1 973	$5 753
14	France	$16 372	$19 409	$50 992
15	Finland	$16 332	$18 742	$53 171
16	Belgium	$16 157	$17 917	$56 348
17	United Kingdom	$14 793	$18 133	$49 931
18	Malta	$14 543	$16 509	$47 578
19	Ireland	$1 452	$17 938	$89 683
20	Japan	$14 255	$17 095	$43 593

Source: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/median-income-by-country

Where people are the most fit

Personally, I need to do sports. I love to move, work with my body and even it may not be 2-phase training or 40 hours a week on a bike, it makes me happy. Workout routines are one of the major players when it comes to being fit. Another one is eating habits and generally country’s cousine. Obviously, food is transported worldwide nowadays so you could cook anything anywhere. Despite this fact, there are huge differences what people, eat, when and how. This reflects on their health, movement abilities, hobbies, general mood and much more. As a father, I care where my family lives, what we eat. So, let’s have a look on obesity index. here comes inverted list showing the countries with least obesity. I selected list of child obesity.

Unfortunatelly, a lot of data behind this table is rather old (some as old as 2013). Second factor to be considered is that many of these countries have opposite problem – their children are starving. It is with a great caution to interpret this data. My suggestion is to consider developed countries. After these adjustments and filters applied, I came up with the following table (numbers represent % in population).

Top 20 Countries with the least children obesity

Ranking	Country	All children	Boys	Girls
1	India	5	5	4,9
2	Bangladesh	7,02	6,04	8,03
3	Kenya	7,8	2,2	13,2
4	Japan	7,9	10,5	4,9
5	Bosnia and Herzegovina	9,3	8	10,7
6	Ghana	9,4	4,2	14,9
7	Myanmar	9,5	9,5	9,6
8	Mongolia	10,1	9,7	10,5
9	Saudi Arabia	10,5	9,4	11,3
10	Pakistan	11,2	9,9	12,7
11	Netherlands	11,5	10,9	12,1
12	Philippines	13,1	13,5	11,7
13	Marshall Islands	13,3	15,4	11,3
14	Algeria	13,7	10,9	16,3
15	Zimbabwe	13,8	13,1	14,3
16	Afghanistan	14,2	15,6	12,7
17	Tanzania	15	14	16
18	Albania	15,3	16,8	13,8
19	Guyana	15,3	14,6	15,9
20	Tunisia	15,3	13,6	16,8

Source: https://data.worldobesity.org/tables/prevalence-of-child-overweight-including-obesity-3/

Where are the best universities

Previous generation taught us (or tried) that education is the most important. As much as it really helps understanding a lot of complex problems, the simple owning an accademic diploma doesn’t guarantee anything. Arguably, life experience, perseverence, contacts gained, social skills learned and all the sauce going with the studies do have a huge influence. There is an annually updated list of the best universities in the world. I downloaded the full date and averaged the universities points over each country to arrive to a list of the best countries to study in by the overall academic (university) education. There may be single universities that do not fit this ranking.

Top 20 Countries by General University Quality

Ranking	Country
1	Netherlands
2	Switzerland
3	Luxembourg
4	Denmark
5	Belgium
6	Australia
7	Germany
8	Sweden
9	Austria
10	United Arab Emirates
11	Canada
12	Ireland
13	United Kingdom
14	Cyprus
15	Norway
16	Iceland
17	United States
18	Finland
19	France
20	Estonia

I would also like to add another very important factor. I recognize the high quality of universities on this list but with the same breath I need to personally object the financing schema. It is my personal nightmare that my child would start adult life with a huge finantial debt coming from the education. It is my personal opinion that there are smarter options out there. Find the advised table including starting costs per year of study. As you can see, there are plenty of high quality universities that do not lead to decades of paying interest, obligations to banks and strings attached.

Top 20 Countries with Free or Reasonably-priced Education

Univerisities Ranking	Country	Cost EU citizens from	Cost non EU citizens from
1	Netherlands	2 314€	6 000€
2	Switzerland	400€	400€
3	Luxembourg	1 200€	1 200€
4	Denmark	0€	6 000€
5	Belgium	835€	2 505€
7	Germany	0€	0€
8	Sweden	0€	7 500€
9	Austria	0€	1 524€
14	Cyprus	0€	6 834€
15	Norway	0€	13 000€
16	Iceland	0€	0€
18	Finland	0€	4 000€
19	France	170€	2 770€
20	Estonia	1 660€	1 660€
21	Italy	900€
25	Portugal	550€	550€
26	Malta	0€	1 080€
28	Spain	1 200€
29	Latvia	1 200€	2 500€
30	Greece	0€	1 500€

Source: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/2023/world-ranking#!/length/-1/sort_by/rank/sort_order/asc/cols/scores, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_annual_precipitation

Where housing is the cheapest

This part is quite tricky as the tables I could find relate mostly to the situation of locals. They consider income-cost ration for buying and renting. The tricky part is that income needs to be weighted in. Until I figure out how to compare relatively, the following table will show the cheapest real estate by country from the locals POV.

Top 20 Countries with the Cheapest Real Estate (For Its Inhabitants)

Rank	Country	Price To Income Ratio
1	Iceland	5.9
2	Belgium	6.4
3	Denmark	6.7
4	Netherlands	6.7
5	Spain	7.1
6	Ireland	7.3
7	Finland	8.1
8	Norway	8.2
9	United Kingdom	8.4
10	Latvia	8.6
11	Bulgaria	8.7
12	Sweden	9.1
13	Italy	9.2
14	Luxembourg	10.1
15	Germany	10.2
16	Estonia	10.2
17	Austria	10.6
18	France	10.8
19	Switzerland	11.0
20	Moldova	11.1

Source: https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment

Where is the most sun and rain

There are studies saying that sun has a positive influence on the people’s mood and health. Thanks to weather stations we can measure quite precisely how much sunlight and rain falls in various regions. I used medians over the countries to make the following two tables.

Top 20 Countries with The Most Sunlight

Ranking	Country	Hours of sun per year
1	Namibia	3727
2	Egypt	3570
3	Sudan	3557
4	United Arab Emirates	3509
5	Oman	3493
6	Botswana	3372
7	Eritrea	3356
8	Chad	3353
9	Mauritania	3332
10	Cyprus	3314
11	Israel	3311
12	Djibouti	3279
13	Algeria	3274
14	Iraq	3241
15	Saudi Arabia	3237
16	Burkina Faso	3209
17	Niger	3201
18	Libya	3178
19	Afghanistan	3175
20	South Africa	3173

Top 20 Countries with the Most Rainwater

Water gives life, makes everything green and fertile. Green colour calms mind. I consider water reserves also a safety factor for the country’s future. Although some wars were and are being fought over water…

Rank	Country	Average precipitation (mm per year)
1	Luxembourg	934 000
2	Comoros	900 000
3	South Sudan	900 000
4	France	867 000
5	Portugal	854 000
6	Ethiopia	848 000
7	Belgium	847 000
8	Gambia	836 000
9	Italy	832 000
10	Slovakia	824 000
11	Eswatini	788 000
12	Lesotho	788 000
13	Netherlands	778 000
14	Mexico	758 000
15	Burkina Faso	748 000
16	United States	715 000
17	Denmark	703 000
18	Germany	700 000
19	Tajikistan	691 000
20	Senegal	686 000

Other Indexes

if you want, you can also consider traffic situation, air quality, amount of labor hours and many more factors. I chose the ones above from my personal perspective as I dove more and more into the topic. One of other factors I didn’t present here is average land elevation as I really love mountains and would love to live close to them. I also consider inahbited areas in my own country over-populated. I would love to have more space, air, privace, solitude. I made a population density index as well. So, the next step is really a personal preference.

Where do I want to live

My personal conclusion out of all these facts is the following table of preference. I was very positively surprised by the ranking of my own country (Czechia). We complain about almost everything, still we ranked very frequently close to the top 20 if not higher. In my final ranking, Czechia ended up on the 22nd place.

Personal calculated ranking	Country
1	Switzerland
2	Netherlands
3	Luxembourg
4	Denmark
5	Norway
6	Iceland
7	Finland
8	Austria
9	Sweden
10	Belgium
11	Australia
12	Canada
14	Germany
15	United States
16	Ireland
18	Israel
19	France
20	United Kingdom

In case anyone is interested in the full data tables, send me an email, I can share a link. let me know how your country is doing and what surprised you.