[ryandrake]

These places are so large and diverse it doesn't make much sense comparing them. You really want to be comparing many-to-many American states to European countries. You can't generalize about "The USA" quality of life. Massachusetts is going to be vastly different from Mississippi in terms of basically every quality of life attribute you can possibly measure. I'm not from Europe, but I bet the same is true country-to-country there.

[bobxmax]

This is a good point. People always point to places like Sweden yet conveniently ignore the Bulgarias. In fact, most EU countries wouldn't even be considered a first world country.