How Liveable is my City? Part 2 | Can the Mercer Quality of Living Report help us to describe Urban Liveability?

Date: 30th August 2021

Author: Finn Faust

The QLab blog series “How Liveable is my City?” discusses various approaches to define and measure Urban Liveability proposed by companies, organizations, and academic institutions. 

Last week’s blog discussed the benefits and limitations of the Global Liveability Index published biannually by The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). Today’s blog will look at another popular global measurement of Urban Liveability; the Mercer Quality of Living Survey. How does Mercer define and measure Liveability? What are the survey’s strengths and limitations?

How does Mercer define and measure Liveability? 

Mercer, a US-based yet globally operating consulting company, bases its annual global ranking of cities on ‘data on quality of living for employees sent to work abroad.’ Therefore, Mercer’s primary audience appears to be companies that operate and invest internationally and employees arranging compensation when working abroad.

Mercer states that “quality of life” is subject to personal circumstances (e.g., health). In contrast, according to Mercer, ‘”quality of living” embodies objective aspects of daily living that most people agree on as being important for having good living standards, such as personal safety and security, health, transport infrastructure, availability of consumer goods, and adequate housing, schooling, and recreation opportunities’ (Parakatil, 2021). The indexes’ main categories are, as illustrated by Mercer:

The categories’ uneven weighting centers on the priorities typically set by expatriates, says Mercer (2021). The report evaluates just short of 450 cities worldwide based on ’39 criteria, on a scale of 0 to 10 (low to high), then cluster[s] those criteria into ten main categories’ (Parakatil, 2021).

What are the survey’s strengths?

• Clearly defined audience: Mercer describes their audience and its survey’s applicability clearly. The survey’s description does not imply that it measures the quality of urban development or policy changes relevant to a city’s residents.
• Adaptation possible: The Quality of Living Report tool allows users to change the categories’ weightings and set individual priorities. 
• Considers context: The survey’s insights are somewhat applicable to individual expatriates. The report evaluates the quality of living in the target city relative to the employee’s home city.
• A broad selection of categories: Mercer covers categories similar to the EIU (political stability, infrastructure, healthcare, education, and culture and environment). Moreover, the report prioritizes housing, consumer goods, recreation, economic, and natural environment as main categories and discloses their weighting. Thus, infrastructure and stability-related indicators, which are necessary yet insufficient criteria to assess a location’s quality of living, are supplemented by a heavier weighting of socio-economic and natural indicators than in the EIU’s Liveability Index.
• Attempts to reduce bias: Mercer claims to focus on quantifiable indicators for quality of living and explicitly aims to avoid cultural comparison that may lead to a biased measurement.
• Correlates with subjective well-being: Mercer’s city ranking correlates with the perceived well-being reported by European citizens (Okulicz-Kozaryn & Valente, 2018). Statistically speaking, this implies convergent construct validity; Mercer’s conclusions (quality of living) align with an associated concept’s findings (subjective well-being).

What are the survey’s limitations?

• Ignores policy trends: While Mercer claims that the report allows comparison over time, the categories do not encompass policies cities might apply to promote better living. Similar to the EIU’s Liveability Index, this leads to certain questions being unaddressed, for instance:

1. How does a city tackle contemporary challenges to living quality?
2. How does a city promote healthier lifestyles?
3. To what degree does a city promote sustainable urban design, green architecture, and responsible resource management?

• Methodology not revealed: Similar to the EIU, Mercer does not disclose its measurement methods beyond the weighting of the main categories. As a result, we lack knowledge regarding the report’s statistical reliability. Check out last week’s blog if you’d like to learn more about the problems that may arise when a study’s reliability is unknown.
• Few academic reviews available: The literature reviewing Mercer’s methodology is hardly accessible; I couldn’t find any despite extensive research. 

Summary & Conclusion

Mercer’s Quality of Living Report appears to base its assessment on a broader selection of categories than the EIU’s Liveability Index discussed in the previous blog post. However, scientific reviews of the methodology, as well as detailed descriptions by Mercer, are scarce. Moreover, since the survey does not include policy trends, we should not apply Mercer’s ranking to describe urban development or smart city planning. Positively, because Mercer defines their audience quite clearly, the chance that its readers are misinterpreting the Quality of Living Report as a reflection of urban development is limited.

What’s coming up next?

Next week’s blog will discuss stakeholders who examine urban Liveability with a greater focus on future-proof policies. We’ll discuss why policy-based rankings might be essential for you as a changemaker. 

Thank you for sharing this article with your network and ’til next week!

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