Despite its relatively poor health service, bad weather and gender inequality, Ireland has emerged as having the best quality of life of any country in the world. Liam Reid reports.
According to a new survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the positive aspects of living in Ireland greatly outweigh these negatives and, when combined, make it the most attractive place to live and work in the world.
The survey of 111 countries, included in the EIU's The World in 2005 publication, found that Ireland had the highest measure of quality of life when a series of factors were combined.
Based on the simple premise that money is not the only thing in life, the "quality-of-life index"identified a range of indicators to pinpoint the best countries to live in.
The researchers then weighted these measures in terms of importance and combined them to produce one overall rating for each country.
The measures used included income per capita; life expectancy; political freedom and stability; family and community life; climate; and gender equality.
Overall the survey found that the rankings of many wealthy countries were pulled down by poor scores in community and family life measures.
It said that the increasing affluence in western societies had been marked by "a traditional breakdown in traditional institutions" and a rise in drug use, crime and alcohol addiction.
"In personal terms this has also been manifested in increased general uncertainty and an obsession with personal risk," the report states.
Unlike many other wealthy countries, however, Ireland also scored very high in terms of measures of a strong family and community life, including high union membership, high church attendance and low divorce rate."When one understands the interplay of modernity and tradition in determining life satisfaction, it is then easy to see why Ireland ranks a convincing first in the international quality of life index," the World in 2005 report said.
Ireland "combines the most desirable elements of the new - material well-being, low unemployment rates, political liberties" - with the preservation of certain traditional values "such as stable family life and the avoidance of the breakdown of community".
It said its score on these values were well above the EU average, easily off-setting its below-average scores on climate, gender equality and health.
It also combined this with the fact that Ireland was the fourth-richest country in the world, based on forecasts for GDP per capita in 2005.
This GDP measure was adjusted to take into account the high cost of living.
The study highlighted the fact that Ireland's neighbour, the UK, came 29th, well below its income ranking.
It said social and family breakdown offset the impact of high incomes and low unemployment in the UK.
It also pointed out that Germany (25th) and France (26th) scored lower than the US (13th) on the index "belying the notion that the big eurozone nations compensate for their productivity with a better quality of life than in America".
Unsurprisingly, countries with histories of political instability, such as Zimbabwe and Haiti, scored very poorly.
Many of the former Soviet bloc nations also had very low ranks, including Russia (105th), Ukraine (99th) and Belarus (101st).
Getting a non-monetary and objective measure of quality of life has been a holy grail for economists and social scientists, and one which the Economist Intelligence Unit believes it has achieved.
It excluded educational levels from its measure, along with the poverty gap, as research had indicated that these measures did not have a major bearing on people's quality of life, it claimed.
Mr Dan O'Brien, an Irish economist and a senior editor with the unit, said that, while the index was not a measure of happiness, he believed it was "a robust statistical measure" of quality of life.
However, he warned that relatively high levels of social and family cohesion in Ireland, which have been central to the quality-of-life measure, could fall as the effects of wealth began to have a greater impact on society.