Macau ranks 130th in quality of life report

Macau’s ranking at 130th of the 194 countries and territories listed in the 2010 Quality of Life Index, conducted by International Living (IL), fails to take into consideration the reality of the territory.
Several experts on the matter, including researchers that have completed identical reports, have established that the categories used in the International’s Living report are “very Americanised” and not appropriate for a territory with the unique features of Macau.
With an overall score of 52 points, Macau finds itself placed lower than countries such as Zambia, Lebanon, Malawi, China, Jordan, Armenia, Ghana and Colombia, and only just beats the overall scores of countries like North Korea, Uganda, Iran, Iraq, Somalia and Afghanistan.

• Ricardo Rato: “The categories used should have been adjusted to the reality of the territory”

To produce this annual Index, the publication considers nine categories: Cost of Living; Culture and Leisure; Economy; Environment; Freedom; Health; Infrastructure; Safety and Risk; and Climate. The Index requires much analysis of data from official sources, including government websites, the World Health Organisation, and other sources such as The Economist.
According to Ricardo Rato, Lecturer at the School of Management, Leadership and Government of the University of Saint Joseph’s and researcher of the Macau Quality of Life Report, it’s these categories that bring Macau down in the rankings.
“This study doesn’t confirm what all the other studies that are performed regularly say, that Macau is well placed regarding quality of life. But the indicators or categories used are very specific and may not be the best to assess the quality of life in Macau,” he told the Macau Daily Times.
“Moreover, we can see in the study, which is all done with an Americanised vision of reality, as this study seems to be focused for the American expat community, or those wanting to leave the US and live somewhere else,” Ricardo Rato added.
As an example, Ricardo Rato uses the category of infrastructure, in which Macau is poorly placed. The category focused on the number of cars per capita and per square kilometre, as well as freeways in the territory, which because of Macau’s size do not exist. “The categories used should have been adjusted to the reality of the territory,” said Rato.
Contacted by MDTimes, lawmaker Pereira Coutinho said that “this comes to prove once again what we have been saying over the time, ie the gap between the rich and the poor has worsened, as well as the general quality of life for Macau residents.”
“Macau has lost much of its quality of life, which has to do with a number of items, including the environment, the level of transparency and honesty in the government, medical care, which includes public hospitals and the guarantees of citizens rights,” the lawmaker added.
The Macau score was particularly low in terms of Environment (zero points), where countries like the United Arab Emirates (16 points), Mayotte (17 points) and Yemen (19 points) are the closest to Macau’s score, Infrastructure (24 points), Leisure and Culture (43 points) and Freedom (50 points), in a scale of 0 to 100.
The place Macau stands in the rankings is a warning sign for the government, according to Gary Ngai, president of the Executive Board for the Macao Association for the Promotion of Exchange between Asia-Pacific and Latin America (MAPEAL).
“Taking into account Macau’s score in the Environment category, I hope that the next Macau International Environmental Co-operation Forum and Exhibition (MIECF) can tackle that problem, because it’s a huge one,” Ngai said.
For the fifth year running, France takes first place in the Quality of Life Index, followed by Australia, Switzerland, Germany, New Zealand, Luxembourg and the United States.