THE BEST AND WORST DESTINATIONS TO LIVING AND WORKING ABROAD - 2021 EXPAT INSIDER SURVEY

THE BEST AND WORST DESTINATIONS TO LIVING AND WORKING ABROAD - 2021 EXPAT INSIDER SURVEY - How do expats rate life in their respective host country? How happy are they with specific aspects of living abroad, such as the quality of life, the ease of settling in, or their working life? And what kind of impact has the COVID-19-pandemic had on life abroad? | Photo by Mikhail Nilov from Pexels

 

Today, InterNations publishes its Expat Insider 2021 survey, one of the world’s most comprehensive surveys about living and working abroad with more than 12,000 survey respondents.

 

Overall, the survey report analyzes 59 destinations around the globe, ranking the best and worst countries for expats and offering in-depth information on five areas of expat life: Quality of Life, Cost of Living, Personal Finance, Working Abroad, and Ease of Settling In. Additionally, the respondents share how they have been experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic and how it has impacted their life.

 

Expats in Indonesia Struggle with a Low Quality of Life but Find It Easy to Settle In

Indonesia comes 31st out of 59 destinations in the Expat Insider 2021 survey. The country lands in the top 10 for the ease of settling in (8th) and narrowly misses out on them for the cost of living (11th). While it also gets a fairly good result in the Personal Finance Index (17th), it performs poorly in the Working Abroad (47th) and Quality of Life (55th) Indices.

 

For further information on how expats rate life in Indonesia, please take a look at the full press release attached.  

The Best and Worst Destinations for Expats in 2021

Out of 59 countries in the Expat Insider 2021 survey, the top 3 destinations for expat life in 2021 are Taiwan (1st), Mexico (2nd), and Costa Rica (3rd). On the other hand, expats rate Kuwait (59th), Italy (58th), and South Africa (57th) the worst.

 

For further information on the best and worst destinations for expats in 2021, please take a look at the full press release in the download center of our e-mail.

Expat Life during the COVID-19 Pandemic

On a global scale, 45% of survey respondents say that COVID-19 had an impact on their current stay abroad or their relocation plans: the share of expats who say so (37%) either decided to not move back home in the near future (18%), planned to move to another country but had to change these plans (8%), will move to another country due to the pandemic (6%), or will move back home sooner than originally planned (5%).

 

The share of local respondents whose relocation plans were affected by COVID-19 (61%) is a lot higher: some of them were living abroad but moved home sooner than planned (18%), others were planning to move abroad but had to change their plans (35%), and about one in ten have now decided to move abroad because of the pandemic (9%).

For further information on the global impact of COVID-19 on expat life, please take a look at the full press release in the download center of our e-mail.

About the InterNations Expat Insider 2021 Survey

For its annual Expat Insider survey, InterNations asked 12,420 expats representing 174 nationalities and living in 186 countries or territories to provide information on various aspects of expat life, as well as their gender, age, and nationality. Participants were asked to rate up to 37 different aspects of life abroad on a scale of one to seven. The rating process emphasized the respondents’ personal satisfaction with these aspects, considering both emotional topics and more factual aspects with equal weight. The respondents’ ratings of the individual factors were then bundled in various combinations for a total of 13 subcategories, and their mean values were used to draw up five topical indices: Quality of Life, Ease of Settling In, Working Abroad, Personal Finance, and Cost of Living. The first four of these indices were further averaged together with expats' general satisfaction with their life in order to rank 59 expat destinations around the world. In 2021, the top 10 are Taiwan, Mexico, Costa Rica, Malaysia, Portugal, New Zealand, Australia, Ecuador, Canada, and Vietnam. Moreover, expats were asked about how COVID-19 has impacted their life abroad; however, these responses did not influence the overall ranking.

For a country to be featured in the indices and consequently in the overall ranking, a sample size of at least 50 survey participants per destination was necessary.