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DENMARK, NORWAY, SWEDEN and Finland invariably top prosperity surveys, their cities lead quality of life surveys and their citizens live long lives.
Legatum Prosperity Index, a global ranking of wealth and wellbeing, placed all four countries, along with Switzerland, in the top five spots of its recent survey. Finland was first.
The region's capitals feature high up on quality of life surveys: Recently Copenhagen, Stockholm and Helsinki ranked in the top 10 most livable cities in the world, according to a survey by lifestyle magazine Monocle. Scandinavia's citizens also live long lives, with average life expectancy of 79.
Doesn't this all add up to a good reason to move there?
Well, for many yes, but not for most of Europe's mobile wealthy. Although details are sketchy, migration figures give few indications the wealthy are moving to any of the four countries. Sweden said the number of those seeking residency who are self-employed -- the most likely category the wealthy fit into -- has fallen sharply since 2005 to less than 500 last year.
Migration to Denmark, Finland and Norway has risen sharply from Europe in the last couple of years, but most of this is coming from the new European Union countries, like Poland, Lithuania and Romania. There is little evidence that the footloose wealthy from other parts of Europe want to live in Scandinavia.
Onerous tax burdens for high net worth individuals in all four countries might be the obvious answer to why the mobile wealthy don't want to relocate to the region. Forbes's annual tax misery index, which evaluates whether taxes attract or repel capital and talent, placed Sweden fourth on the index and Finland ninth.
But Norway and Denmark are way down the list, at 20th and 26th place respectively. Amazingly, Denmark is deemed to have a less onerous tax regime than Switzerland -- often regarded as Europe's most preferential tax regime for the rich.
So high taxes might only partly explain why the wealthy aren't relocating to the region. Inevitably, the reasons to live in any country are more complicated -- even more complicated if you're wealthy. But what is for sure is that scoring high on indexes of prosperity and quality of life doesn't carry much store with the rich.
It seems clear that the problem is with the quality of life indexes. They should give extra weightings to exclusive restaurants, hotels and clubs, as well as access to top of the range luxury products and services and proximity of important cultural events. Perhaps most importantly, they should take into account the number or ultra-wealthy already living in the country as the rich tend to flock together.
These indexes could ignore things that are important to most people -- like good universal health care and quality of public transport links -- given how little the very wealthy use these services.
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