The summit meeting of world superpowers has just released its findings of the best places to live, ranking Australia at number six overall, with Germany in the top spot.
The rankings evaluate 60 countries across nine sub-categories from a survey of more than 16,000 residents around the world.
Australia scored particularly high in the ‘quality of life’ section at number four, and came in fifth in the ‘citizenship’ section.
The ‘quality of life’ sub-ranking is based on several factors: affordability, job market, economic stability, family-friendliness, income equality, political stability, safety, and quality of public services such as the healthcare and school systems.
The other categories used to make up the final score were adventure, cultural influence, entrepreneurship, heritage, movers, open for business, and power.
Australia would have finished even higher if it hadn’t taken hits in the ‘heritage’ and ‘movers’ sections.
We slipped to 25th spot in ‘heritage’ (culturally accessible, has a rich history, has great food, many cultural attractions) and 20th in ‘movers’ (different, distinctive, dynamic, unique).
The comprehensive study also found that Australians remain particularly concerned about environmental issues, according to survey and government data.
Australia has ratified the Kyoto Protocol, the United Nations treaty that calls on nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Nevertheless, carbon dioxide emissions per capita are comparatively high among nations.
Here’s a full list of the top 20 countries, according to the list:
- German
- Canada
- United Kingdom
- United States of America
- Sweden
- Australia
- Japan
- France
- Netherlands
- Denmark
- New Zealand
- Austria
- Italy
- Luxembourg
- Singapore
- Spain
- China
- Ireland
- South Korea
- Brazil
