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I often think about how I’d love to move somewhere abroad, especially like now in the winter months in England, where it’s mostly grey and rainy and absolutely freezing cold.
Living somewhere warmer has always massively appealed to me — I love the sunshine and hot weather and I’m a much happier person in the summer. But as I get older, a country’s appeal has become about things other than the weather, and more about the overall quality of life, how happy the people who live there are, and their overall wellbeing.
Now I think I would actually love to live in a Scandinavian country as they seem to have a great quality of life, it sounds brilliant for children — my friend moved to Holland last year and it just sounds so much better than living in England for all of the family; the schools are small, it’s so much safer than here, and they can cycle about everywhere safely. It just all sounds (and looks!) so lovely.
Lots of people in this country emigrate as they become older or when they retire, and I can really understand the appeal of that. But which is the best country to live in for older people?
Do you think you could guess which would come out on top, or where the UK would be in a list?
Age UK Mobility has looked at a combination of different datasets to create a ranking of the best countries to live in for older people to give a definitive ranking of each nation. The datasets used to create a ranking of each country were: life expectancy, health care index score, societal safety score (global peace index), happiness index score, cost of living index score, property prices index score, and a nation’s retirement age (when you can claim a state pension). The results are quite interesting, although not always surprising.
As I would expect, the Nordic countries have done really well, with Finland coming out at the very top, rating highly across all categories and top in the happiest country index. Finland has a high life expectancy comparatively, at 81.9 years, and comes out in the top 10 for safety.
I would love to visit Finland one day, and maybe now I’ll consider moving there when I’m older as well!
The average life expectancy is a good reflection on how a country is doing in many areas, such as their health care and how safe the country is, and overall is likely to be a good indicator of it being a good place for older people to live.
The five countries with the highest life expectancy are: Hong Kong, Japan, Switzerland, Singapore, and Spain. I wouldn’t say any of these are particularly surprising. Knowing this makes me want to move to Spain even more, and live out my days eating cured meats, cheeses and olive oil and drinking red wine and Cava!
Hong Kong has the highest life expectancy in the rankings, with an average age of 84.9 yrs. However, Monaco (which doesn’t appear in the rankings due to insufficient data in other categories) has the highest life expectancy in the world at 86!
It feels quite sad reading about the worst countries to live in, as obviously the people in these countries are unlikely to be able to move away from them, despite their often poor living conditions, lack of safety, and low life expectancies.
Unsurprisingly, Iraq came out as the worst country to live in, with the country finishing last place in terms of safety and near the bottom in terms of health care. It does have what I would say is a decent life expectancy, of 70.6 years which is great but that does surprise me. Nigeria has the lowest life expectancy of 54.7, so there is quite a difference between the two.
Nigeria, Uganda and Namibia have the lowest life expectancies of the 110 countries included, which isn’t really surprising knowing what we do about the poverty and famine in these countries.
Kenya also did pretty badly in terms of the best countries to live in, coming second to the bottom. It has a poor life expectancy and poor healthcare, although it is considered relatively safe compared to the other countries near the bottom of the ratings.
Unsurprisingly, the UK did pretty well overall, coming 17th out of the 110 countries. If those of us already living here stay in the UK into old age, then we are pretty lucky — we have it very good, despite not making it into the top 10.
The UK finished higher than France, Japan and quite a bit higher than the USA (which came 28th), but below all of the Nordic countries, Germany, Canada, and New Zealand, none of which are particularly surprising.
The UK is a pretty safe country, ranking at 28, benefitting from a generally peaceful society but doesn’t do so well in the cost of living category — it’s worst overall, ranking at 82nd. But this isn’t exactly shocking; it being such a well-developed country.
I was a bit surprised that the UK came 14th in the Happiness Index, rising from 22nd in the 2010-2012 Happiness Index, as we generally like to whinge quite a lot don’t we, complaining to each other about the weather and anything else we can think of to complain about! But maybe we know that we actually have it good compared to a lot of the world, and all of these things — good healthcare, high life expectancy and good safety do actually make us happier.
It appears that as a nation, there is a lot more we can and should be doing to improve the quality of life and wellbeing for our elderly, particularly as our population ages.
Looking at providing more support for older people to live independently, whilst also addressing the issue of loneliness alongside our societies attitude towards older people are all things that we need to look at and improve upon. There is lots that we can do for us to be able to move up the rankings as the best place to live for older people. Our older generations are so important and so we need to do as much we can to make life enjoyable, safe, and comfortable for them. And it’ll be us one day!
Did you think Finland would come out as the very best country to live in as an older person? What do you think about the UK results? Have you ever thought about moving to another country?
This is a collaborative post.
Welcome to Birds and Lilies! I'm Lou: mother, blogger and freelance writer. This is my lifestyle blog, where I talk about motherhood, infertility and IVF, beauty, my love for food and wine, as well as my thoughts about stuff, and our real-life and travel adventures.
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