ECA’s annual Location Ratings survey has recently concluded and hardship scores have been fully updated for all 504 of our published locations. As in previous years, most cities registered only minor adjustments, but several regions faced acute challenges – civil unrest, military conflict, or natural disasters – that led to notable escalations in their ratings.
2024 was another turbulent year in the Middle East. The intensification of hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel triggered significant score increases for expatriates stationed in Beirut. Medical services were overstretched, recreation options curtailed and most international airlines suspended flights to Lebanon.
Intense fighting continued in large parts of Sudan between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. Hardship ratings remain greatly elevated for the now-devastated capital Khartoum, which faces multiple humanitarian crises including urban combat, sexual violence, a cholera outbreak and severely restricted movement.
Similarly, the few expats remaining in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince will see their location allowances maintained at a high level due to the extreme insecurity and dire living conditions. Armed groups now control almost the entirety of the city. Rampant gang violence continued throughout the year, even affecting wealthier suburbs such as Petionville. Critical healthcare, education and security services were largely inoperative, and flights were suspended after aircraft were struck by gunfire.
Armed gang activity also drove score increases in Ecuador. An emergency state of ‘internal armed conflict’ was declared in January following a surge in narco-related violence, during which the murder rate skyrocketed to the highest in Latin America. As mortuaries overflowed, the military was mobilised to enforce curfews and reclaim urban centres and prisons controlled by heavily-armed gangs.
Extreme weather events affected the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul and eastern Spain this year. Both Porto Alegre and Valencia saw increases to their Natural Phenomena scores due to catastrophic and unprecedented flooding. Additional adjustments were applied to Porto Alegre’s scoring to account for other flood-related hardships, including sanitation hazards and a rise in opportunistic crimes such as looting and robbery.
Elsewhere, Typhoon Yagi caused severe flooding and landslides, claiming more than 500 lives in Myanmar, Vietnam and neighbouring countries. The capitals, Naypyidaw and Hanoi, both incurred rating hikes due to the loss of life and extensive damage to transport and communication infrastructure.
However, the location which saw the steepest score increase this year was less widely covered in the media: New Caledonia, a French overseas territory in the southwest Pacific. In May, France’s Assemblée Nationale passed a constitutional reform extending voting rights to long-term residents. This move sparked weeks of violent unrest among the pro-independence ethnic Kanaks, who perceived it as a threat to their electoral influence. Widespread arson attacks destroyed hundreds of vehicles and businesses, and over a dozen people were killed. Nightly curfews and a state of emergency were declared in response to the riots. Armed barricades and very limited public transportation services further impeded mobility. The healthcare system struggled to cope, with many medical professionals departing the territory. Shortages of some staple foods and restrictions on alcohol sales added to the strain, and tensions remained high even after the violence subsided. Collectively, these factors resulted in notable increases to Nouméa's hardship scores across multiple assessment categories.
Language
In addition to closely monitoring global events each year, ECA International is committed to continually refining and enhancing the Location Ratings scoring system. Our methodology undergoes incremental improvements to capture a broad and relevant spectrum of hardship factors, delivering comprehensive and objective assessments. This approach helps ensure that expatriates are appropriately compensated for the diverse challenges they encounter when adapting to the living conditions in their host countries.
This year, we have refined the scoring process for the Language component of our ratings system. In addition to applying a hardship penalty score for moves between locations with different primary or secondary spoken languages, we now also consider the writing systems used in each location. This update reflects the difficulties which expats may face in daily life when an unfamiliar writing system predominates in street signage, menus, official documents, transportation, product packaging and other everyday contexts.
We use the term 'writing system' to reflect the diversity of global scripts. Alphabets such as Cyrillic, Greek or Armenian use separate letters for distinct sounds. Abugidas, used to write Hindi or Amharic, represent vowel-consonant pairs with single characters, while Arabic and Hebrew scripts usually omit vowels altogether. Logographic systems, like Chinese characters or Japanese kanji, are different still, with each symbol representing a word or a concept rather than a phonetic element.
Variations may exist within a writing system. Many Latin-based scripts feature diacritical marks or additional letters. While these differences require a degree of adaptation, they do not significantly hinder readability and thus do not affect hardship scores. English-speaking expats won’t struggle to locate crème brûlée on a dessert menu in Paris, or follow signposts to Pão de Açúcar in Rio. Similarly, the modified scripts used to write Urdu or Farsi are fundamentally similar to the Arabic lettering from which they are derived. Still, expats on assignment from Casablanca to Karachi or Tehran must adapt to some new letters (and the flowing local style of calligraphy sometimes used.)
Looking ahead to 2025, ECA will continue to monitor not only the high-profile crises grabbing headlines, but also the myriad day-to-day factors shaping the expatriate experience. Alongside language and writing systems, variables such as climate, transportation, pollution, healthcare, housing and recreation – although less dramatic than riots or typhoons – are instrumental in determining overall hardship allowances.
As always, we welcome feedback and commentary from international assignees, wherever in the world they may be stationed. Active participation in our yearly Location Ratings survey helps ensure that we stay attuned to the evolving realities of expat life. On-the-ground insights are vital in keeping our scores and methodologies accurate and current.
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Updated annually, our Location Ratings system measures the quality of expatriate living conditions in over 500 locations around the world to arrive at a fair and consistent assessment of the level of difficulty the expatriate will experience in adapting to a new location. Factors evaluated include climate; availability of health services; housing and utilities; isolation; access to a social network and leisure facilities; infrastructure; personal safety; political tensions and air quality.
ECA's Location Ratings are delivered through our Location Allowance Calculator which offers a transparent and detailed system for calculating location allowances for expatriates relocating to a new country.
Don't hesitate to get in touch if you're interested in learning more about our data, organise a demo of any of our calculators, or would like to discuss anything around location allowances or other global mobility issues.
Please contact us to speak to a member of our team directly.