This paper applies an empirical approach to estimate the quality of life in Brazilian metropolitan areas which is alternative to the hedonic approach. The revealed preference approach (Kahn, 2005) was applied to obtain evidences of the quality of life in metropolitan regions, assuming that the differences in wages and costs of housing, which tend to persist among the regions of a country, reveal the quality of the amenities offered by those regions. Based on that assumption, a ranking of metropolitan areas with respect to quality of life was structured based on nominal wage and rent roll and according to Kahn (1995): Belém, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Recife, Salvador, Porto Alegre, Fortaleza, Curitiba, Belo Horizonte.
Amenity valuation; quality of amenities; life quality index
