Thank you, your comment is really useful. My main problem would be: "what are the things I should be looking for?". I got fixated on the World Values Survey factors, but I might be wrong. I would gather happiness is important, but it might not vary for the same individual between countries. The "Relative closeness to other countries" is a difficult one, I thought it would be really important but some people here pointed out it mightn't. I will address this later on my comment to Kaj.
You provided me with some additional possible factors. Here are my thoughts on them:
Language barrier
This is hard to account for. I'm expecting that in no developed country I would be put in a situation where relevant people (from my university) would not be talking in English if I'm on the conversation. If it is not true, this is majorly relevant. If it is true, this is mildly relevant. I would expect this would be both a function of English proficiency and willingness to talk in English. The first data is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EF_English_Proficiency_Index And indeed, as many have said, Sweden is number 1. However, I do not know how to find the "Willingness" factor.
Socio-economic system
Relevant. I believe this is accounted for on the World Value Survey, as type of government strongly covaries with values. More modern (rational-secular/self-expressing) have more liberal systems, while less modern have more strong governments. (while the really ancient ones have almost no State).
Political situation
Given all my choices are highly developed countries, I don't think this is relevant. But I'm not completely sure. What did you mean here?
Public transport
Yes, indeed. Highly practical and not accounted for. Commuting times and cost, real estate market and so on are very important. One of the many reasons I have not considered London was because of extremely high rents. Also, this brings back to mind why I posted this. I remember reading a very useful post on how to choose a house, where it pointed out to many relevant but unaccounted factors, commuting was one of them. What I want is something similar for countries.
How good you feel about the country
Given I have never visited most of them, is this really relevant? Ideally, how I feel should track all the other relevant factors.
My main problem would be: "what are the things I should be looking for?".
That's hard to tell, since some factors will always be personal. What you could do is think about the stuff you like and dislike from your country and the countries you have visited. I wouldn't have thought of "public transport" unless I noticed how terrible Belgium does it and how much better Germany and the UK do it.
Given all my choices are highly developed countries, I don't think this is relevant. But I'm not completely sure. What did you mean here?
I can...
EDIT: I've found a very relevant indicator for my question, see "Quality of life" criteria below.
My main question is: which non-academic factors should I consider when moving to another country/city for a PhD? Further, I would also like to evaluate each country/city1 according to those criteria, but first I need to know which are the relevant criteria. If you know any (any at all) scientific literature on moving to another country and well being, let me know.
I've lived in Brazil all my life, I really like it here for many reasons. Mostly, by how personal relationships are established and maintained. However, Brazil's inability to construct a stable well developed society have crippled my intellectual development, and I simply cannot take it anymore - my brain will die here. Moreover, I feel like most of my high level desires(values) are much more in line with countries on the other end of the World Values Survey graphic. I have rational/secular and self-expressing values, instead of traditional-survival oriented ones. For all those reasons, I will be applying for my PhD aboard. I have pondered many of the career and academic factors involved, and I've had the help of many good and objective indexes available (e.g.: here and here). I've mapped most of the Departments of Philosophy in which I could research my topic (moral enhancement), and I believe these are the major factors. However, there is one other important factor I'm a bit clueless about: which country/city is better in all other aspects already not accounted by academic criteria?
My main options are2:
However, this list is solely based on academic criteria. I need to factor in non-academic criteria. In fact, I do not even know which are the relevant non-academic criteria. That would be my first question. I got fixated on the World Values Survey factors, but I might be wrong. I would gather the happiness index is important, but it might not vary for the same individual between countries, or it might covary oddly with the happiness index of the destination country. My second question would be how each country/city is ranked according to these criteria.
There are many things that will be affected by accessing these other factors. First, I think Oxford is far, far above the 2nd option. But it is above enough that if I do not get in there on the first time (80% probability), I should wait and apply next year again instead of going to somewhere else where I did get accepted? Second, my current plan is to build the strongest possible application for Oxford and use it elsewhere. But if Oxford is not so clearly the undisputed 1st place, then I should be more concerned with building a good application that also accounted for other countries specific criteria. Furthermore, right now, I think I have a major bias against New Zealand. In terms of moral enhancement research it would be the second best after Oxford, it has huge human development, freedom and happiness indexes. However, the fact it is in the freaking middle of nowhere is very discouraging. Am I wrong about this? What are the correct factors I should be accounting for?
Here is a list of the factors I could gather from the comments, mostly the one by MathiasZaman:
Finally, please remember this not a competition between countries or cities and refrain for expressing any, however tiny, nationalism on the comments. I'm not expressing my subjective feelings either, I'm merely trying to find out the relevant factors and how countries or cities rank according to them.
Footnotes:
1. I would mostly like to be comparing cities, which was what I did when accounting for academic criteria, however (a) some datas are only available for countries, (b) in some cases I do not know to which city I will go and (c) this makes the analysis more complex.
2. US is out of the table for 4 reasons: (1) I would have to throw my MPhil on the garbage and start over. (2) Isn't that far away from a survival-traditional oriented society. (3) GRE (philosophy is the most competitive PhD program, I would have to nearly ace it, and I simply can't do that at the present time) (4) Doesn't have many transhumanistic oriented philosophy departments, specially on the top universities. Canada is out for (1), (3) and (4).