Quality of life has become a key metric for comparing how countries perform beyond GDP and economic growth. The Quality of Life Index attempts to capture how people actually live, how safe they feel, how far their income stretches, how clean their surroundings are, how accessible healthcare is, and how much time they lose to daily commutes.
The index used here is from Numbeo, which relies on user-contributed data and questionnaires, together with an empirical formula that takes into account various indicators. These range from purchasing power, pollution and housing affordability to cost of living, safety, healthcare quality, traffic commute times and climate. Higher scores denote more favourable conditions for overall living, and lower scores indicate structural or lifestyle stressors.
According to the 2026 statistics, these are the 10 best countries in Asia ranked by overall quality of life. Data sourced from Numbeo.
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