Living in the US means encountering many opportunities. This country is famous for its diversity and who have already been there, either as a tourist or a student, will know what we are talking about when we say how beautiful and different ever corner of the USA is. Climates and people change as you go from the east coast to the west coast.
The unrivalled natural beauty and the quality of life make the US one of the best destinations to live. The main cities offer all kinds of services, work, and leisure activities in a relaxed and spacious environment. On the other side moving to the United States of America is not simple and requires a lot of preparation and it is necessary to analysis the benefits and the costs. One of the most important things that everybody needs to consider before moving in the US is the quality of life in different cities.
In this work, we are going to rank the US cities by quality of life index, which is an estimation of overall quality of life. It is calculated by using an empirical formula that takes in consideration the purchasing power index, pollution index, house price to income ratio, cost of living index, safety index, health care index, traffic commute time index and climate index. The higher is the value of the index, better is the quality of life.
The city with the highest quality of living in the US is Raleigh, followed by Madison, Columbus, Charlotte and Austin. New York is in the penultimate place in quality of living ranking and Detroit is the city with the worst quality of life in the US.
| Rank | City | Quality of Life Index |
| 1 | Raleigh, NC | 211,8 |
| 2 | Madison, WI | 203,7 |
| 3 | Columbus, OH | 201,5 |
| 4 | Charlotte, NC | 199,4 |
| 5 | Austin, TX | 195,8 |
| 6 | San Diego, CA | 189,6 |
| 7 | Kansas City, MO | 189,3 |
| 8 | Dallas, TX | 188,3 |
| 9 | Seattle, WA | 187,6 |
| 10 | Tampa, FL | 187,4 |
| 11 | Jacksonville, FL | 184,1 |
| 12 | Portland, OR | 183,4 |
| 13 | San Jose, CA | 182,8 |
| 14 | San Antonio, TX | 182,7 |
| 15 | Pittsburgh, PA | 178,5 |
| 16 | Minneapolis, MN | 178,5 |
| 17 | Sacramento, CA | 176,1 |
| 18 | Nashville, TN | 175,8 |
| 19 | Saint Louis, MO | 175,2 |
| 20 | Boston, MA | 174,8 |
| 21 | Atlanta, GA | 173,4 |
| 22 | Tucson, AZ | 173,0 |
| 23 | Oakland, CA | 172,8 |
| 24 | Denver, CO | 172,7 |
| 25 | Salt Lake City, UT | 171,2 |
| 26 | San Francisco, CA | 169,1 |
| 27 | Washington, DC | 169,0 |
| 28 | Anchorage, AK | 167,8 |
| 29 | Orlando, FL | 166,8 |
| 30 | Houston, TX | 165,5 |
| 31 | Baltimore, MD | 164,7 |
| 32 | Indianapolis, IN | 164,5 |
| 33 | Las Vegas, NV | 160,3 |
| 34 | Honolulu, HI | 159,0 |
| 35 | Miami, FL | 157,4 |
| 36 | Phoenix, AZ | 155,5 |
| 37 | Chicago, IL | 155,0 |
| 38 | Philadelphia, PA | 150,6 |
| 39 | Los Angeles, CA | 145,9 |
| 40 | New York, NY | 142,4 |
| 41 | Detroit, MI | 126,7 |
For the others US cities, there is no information about this index, so they are not included in the ranking of the US cities by quality of life.
The data used in this work are provided by Numbeo and are relating to mid-2019.