Quality of life plays a significant role in an job candidate’s decision whether or not to relocate to a new community. At this year’s Idaho Housing and Economic Development Conference, economist Rebecca Ryan developed and shared a free Quality of Life Index local officials can use to take a pulse on the quality of life in their communities and see how they stack up with the competition. Starting with an Excel spreadsheet, planners can look up specific metrics for their community in a worksheet for each of the seven indexes: Vitality, Earning, Learning, Social Capital, After Hours, Cost of Lifestyle and Around Town. After entering their community’s scores in each index and comparing them with similar communities, the scores can be imported into a Handprint Creator which creates a visual way to see how each community rates in each index compared to similar communities. There’s even a 30-minute webinar to help get you started. – Creative Common License