A senior liveability index for European cities

Abstract

The demographic challenge of the ageing population in European countries needs to be assessed in terms of sustainability and effectiveness of public policies improving the quality of life of the elderly. The European Commission has monitored the quality of life in European cities since 2004 through a survey on citizens’ perception of their liveability. Given that the assessment of life quality embeds a multitude of positive and negative aspects, we develop a composite indicator that we call the senior liveability index (SLI) to rank the performance of cities, monitor the rank changes over time and explore possible reasons.