The Aussie cities with the highest wellbeing ranking are revealed: Find out if yours has topped the list

Sydney tops the list in a national report of the ten best places to live in Australia for wellbeing.

The SGS Cities & Regions Wellbeing Index published on Tuesday shows that a whopping eight of the ten best places are in Sydney, with Greater Sydney’s Northern Beaches taking the top spot.

The report examined seven factors in 518 local government areas, including the economy, housing and health care.

The index also took into account factors such as environment, income and prosperity, employment, knowledge and skills, equality, community and work-life balance.

SGS lead partner and lead author of the report Julian Szafraniec said Sydney’s northern beaches and surrounding locations performed well in many areas.

“They have high levels of income and wealth, and higher levels of education and healthcare within those communities,” he said news.com.au.

“What put the Northern Beaches and some of those areas over the edge was that they had more equitable communities.

“They had more volunteer work within the community, fewer people working extreme hours and smaller gender pay gaps than in other parts of the country.”

Queensland also made the list, with Brisbane in tenth place, while Melbourne came in 15th.

‘Each of the places that scored high in the wellbeing index had to score really high on multiple measures, and Brisbane was one of them.

“The country has a large and diverse economy and also scores high on health outcomes, with good access to healthcare and a healthy community,” said Mr Szafraniec.

The ACT ranked second on the list, making it the best-performing region in the country for the second year in a row.

The capital scored highly in the areas of the economy, the environment and work-life balance.

Mr Szafraniec said the index captured a snapshot of each LGA area and hoped it would be a “powerful tool” for decision makers.

“We are at a time in history when traditional measures of growth and success, such as GDP, no longer make sense. You can have a good-paying job, but you still may not be able to afford a house,” he said.

“Business could be booming, and then everything could be taken away by a major climate event. We need to focus on measuring what matters.”

This is the first year that the index takes the gender pay gap into account.

The biggest disparities, which could be as much as $500 a week, were in regional Western Australia, followed by Greater Perth and regional Queensland.

Mr Szafraniec said this is often because the economies of rural and regional areas are based on industries such as mining, which tend to be male-dominated.

It wasn’t all bad news for areas outside Sydney; Yarra in Melbourne was one of the areas that scored highly for work-life balance.

The regional areas of Streaky Bay and Kangaroo Island, both in South Australia, are also highly regarded for their lifestyle focus.

Overall, the regions also outperformed their city peers when it came to housing affordability, with Lockhart and Bogan in NSW and Esperance in Western Australia all performing highly on the Rental Affordability Index.

Worst in the housing category was Perth and remote Queensland communities Palm Island and Yarrabah, with the index considering homelessness and overcrowding in addition to affordability.

The regions were the worst for health, with the report showing that life expectancy was higher in the capital cities, with a person living in Greater Sydney expected to live 84.3 years, compared to 81.7 years in regional NSW .

SGS senior associate and lead author of the report, said Michelle Tjondro SGS website the next important step is what ‘policymakers, companies and communities’ do with the findings.

“As a nation, we must use these findings to determine how we prioritize investments, budgets for socio-economic outcomes and how we can promote equitable community well-being,” she said.

BEST PERFORMING LGAs:

1. Northern Beaches, Greater Sydney

2. Australian Capital Territory

3. North Sydney, Greater Sydney

4. Ku-ring-gai, Greater Sydney

5. Hornsby, Greater Sydney

6. Lane Cove Greater Sydney

7. Mosman, Greater Sydney

8. Sutherland, Greater Sydney

9.Sydney

10.Brisbane