CLEVELAND, OH — August 18, 2006 — When most people think of military life, they think of days gone by, when service members and their families lived a relatively secluded life on a military base, sheltered from the ups and downs experienced by their civilian counterparts. Those days, romanticized in countless Hollywood movies, are long gone. Today, two-thirds of all military members and their families live in the local civilian community.
That’s where traditional measurements of the relative quality of life enjoyed by military families tend to fall short. They focus on life on the military base itself, rather than the local metro area.
As part of a joint project with the Office of the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Military Communities and Family Policy, Expansion Management magazine has developed a variant of its annual Quality of Life Quotient™ that compares the relative quality of life among 126 civilian metros that host a U.S. military installation.
“When I was in the Army, we had a saying, ‘If Mama’s not happy, nobody’s happy,’ that served as a metaphor for evaluating quality of life,” said Bill King, chief editor of Expansion Management, a bimonthly magazine for executives of companies that are actively looking for the best location to expand or relocate their facilities within the next one to three years. “But while traditional measurements have tended to focus on big city cultural amenities like opera, theater, French restaurants and the like, for most Americans quality of life means being able to afford to enjoy a comfortable middle lifestyle.”
The study, called the “2006 Military Communities of Excellence,” looks at the civilian community rather than the military installation, and compares it against the 362 metropolitan areas throughout the country according to 12 general categories: public schools, housing affordability, standard of living, recreation and leisure, health care, crime and safety, spouse employment opportunities, continuing education opportunities, affordable childcare, traffic and commuting, commercial air service, and DOD Quality of Life legislative issues with the 50 states.
To read more about the study's methodology, click here.
“Of the 219 U.S.-based military installations with at least 500 people assigned, all but 27 fall within the confines of one of the 362 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA),” said King. “A total of 99 MSAs are home to one or more active duty installations.”
Expansion Management, which is mailed to more than 45,000 CEOs, vice presidents, directors and other executives of companies that have indicated they are considering expanding into new geographic areas, publishes a number of comparative rankings of metropolitan areas each year. These studies include public schools, health care, taxes and business climate, logistics infrastructure, college-educated work force, and real estate, in addition to quality of life.
“Quality of life is available in just about any location in the United States,” King said. “The only question is how much it will cost to an individual to tap into it. That’s an important issue not only for families, but also for employers, because it translates directly into how much an employer will have to pay to obtain and retain quality employees.”
To view the “2006 Military Communities of Excellence” special supplement, go to Expansion Management’s Web site at www.ExpansionManagement.com and look under MILITARY COMMUNITIES OF EXCELLENCE, or click here.
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