Companies looking to develop their businesses often turn to geographic expansion. In the process of determining where to expand, there exists the need to evaluate potential locations for suitability.

Beyond looking at tax implications, workforce quality, and other standard criteria, many of today’s business leaders are factoring in the benefits of establishing business in a location that offers an overall quality of life.

What constitutes “quality of life”? We recently came across an article on the website, SiteSelection.com, discussing two studies that attempt to measure various aspects of quality of life.

The first study, called the American Dream Composite Index (ADCI), measures the extent to which people in a given state are achieving the American Dream. The ADCI is survey-based and considers responses to 139 statements pertaining to various aspects of the American Dream as reported by respondents from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Responses from people living in each state are used to create the ADCI and the 5 sub-indexes that comprise it.