Why France is the best place to live in the world.

International Living magazine, for the fifth year in a row, has voted France the best place to live in the world. The results are based on ratings of a number of factors, in which France scores high on almost all categories, including health care (100 points), infrastructure (92 points), and safety and risk (100 points). The magazine quotes a young Australian expatriate living in Paris. When she delivered her first child, she received almost five full months of paid maternity leave, and could take another seven months off unpaid, but with her job guaranteed upon her return. AND she got to spend five days in the hospital after the delivery of her healthy son - something unheard of in the U.S. The magazine asserts, "Its (France's) tiresome bureaucracy and high taxes are outweighed by an unsurpassable quality of life, including the world's best health care." The United States slipped from third to seventh this year, mostly because of the economic crisis which has hit harder here and in Great Britain, now ranked 25th, than in most of Europe. Read the whole article: http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/02/11/france.quality.life/index.html?hpt=C2