The Non-Economic Quality of Life on a Sub-National Level in South Africa

Most research on the non-economic quality of life have been (a) on a national level or performed on cross-country comparisons, and/or (b) used subjective indicators to measure how people perceive their non-economic quality of life. In this paper, our main contribution is to construct objective indicators of the non-economic quality of life for 354 sub-national magisterial districts in South Africa. We also compare changes in these indicators over time, and consider methodological issues in the construction of objective indicators of non-economic quality of life. We find that although income does matter for the overall quality of life, non-income components of the quality of life can make an important difference. We find a number of places with low incomes that have been able to achieve higher than expected outcomes in terms of the non-economic quality of life, and that some of the relative income poor areas have improved their non-economic ranking between 1996 and 2004. We also find that the geographical/environmental quality of life in South Africa is better in non-urban areas, where fewer of the country’s population is residing. Significant improvements in the overall quality of life may be achieved through improvements in the urban natural environment.

Sustainable Housing in the Urban Context: International Sustainable Development Indicator Sets and Housing

Housing, an essential aspect of quality of life, is also significant for sustainable development (SD). All of the major international statements on SD refer to housing or settlement strategies. However, indicator sets derived from these statements often fail to include good indicators of sustainable housing. This article outlines the conceptualisation of SD and housing from the international statements. It proceeds by describing the international indicator sets which have been constructed based on these policy statements. International organisations such as the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (UNCSD), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the European Union (EU) have all produced indicator sets. However, this article contends that housing is an underdeveloped indicator and calls for more attention to be paid to the importance of aspects of housing for SD and the measurement of progress towards it via social indicators.

Happy by What Standard? The Role of Interpersonal and Intrapersonal Comparisons in Ratings of Happiness

The present research suggests that many of the most commonly-used indicators of happiness are constructed in a manner that renders them susceptible to null or misleading findings. While few happiness indicators specify particular comparison standards, we demonstrate that people tend to evaluate their happiness relative to comparison standards and give reliably different happiness ratings based on the comparison standards they spontaneously adopt. In Study 1, participants reported that intrapersonal comparisons were a more important consideration than interpersonal comparisons in determining their happiness ratings. In Study 2, participants using a free-response format more frequently reported making intrapersonal comparisons than interpersonal comparisons when rating happiness. In both Studies 1 and 2, participants who reported using interpersonal comparisons gave higher happiness ratings than those who reported using intrapersonal comparisons. In Study 3, participants who were prompted to make interpersonal comparisons gave higher happiness ratings than those prompted to make intrapersonal comparisons. We discuss the implications of these findings for measuring subjective well-being and interpreting happiness research.

Measuring longevity achievements under welfare interdependencies: a case for joint life expectancy indicators

Whereas period life expectancy constitutes an intuitive indicator of the survival conditions prevailing at a particular period, this paper argues that, given the existence of welfare interdependencies, that widespread indicator is nonetheless an incomplete measure of the longevity achievements relevant for human well-being. The central importance of coexistence for human-beings implies that usual life expectancy measures should be complemented by joint life expectancy indicators, which measure the average coexistence time under particular survival conditions. After a study of the theoretical foundations of ‘single’ and ‘joint’ life expectancy indicators, it is shown that joint life expectancy measures tend to enrich significantly the comparison of longevity achievements across countries and periods. Moreover, the introduction of joint life expectancy indicators—as a complement to conventional life expectancy measures—into multi-variable indexes such as the United Nations’ HDI is also shown to affect international rankings of standards of living to a non negligible extent.

The Catalan premium: language and employment in Catalonia

In this paper, I measure the contribution of knowing Catalan to finding a job in Catalonia. In the early 1980s, a drastic language policy change (normalització) promoted the learning and use of Catalan in Catalonia and managed to reverse the falling trend of its relative use vs Castilian (Spanish). Using census data for 1991 and 1996, I estimate a significant positive Catalan premium: the probability of being employed increases between 3 and 5 percentage points if individuals know how to read and speak Catalan; it increases between 2 and 6 percentage points for writing Catalan.

Measuring Structural Gender Equality in Mexico: A State Level Analysis

The main goal of this article is to assess the level of gender equality across the 32 Mexican states. After reviewing conceptual and methodological issues related to previous measures of structural inequality I detail the logic and methodology involved in the construction of a composite and multidimensional measure of gender equality, at the social structural or macrosystem, level in Mexico: GEIMS (Gender Equality Index in Mexican States). The importance of assessing the level of gender equality among Mexican states is of theoretical and practical relevance for understanding potential sources of regional differences regarding many social phenomena. The methodology can be also used to construct gender equality indexes in other Latin American countries.

Labour mobility and regional disparities: the role of female labour participation

Unemployment rates, as well as income per capita, differ vastly across the regions of Europe. Labour mobility can play a role in resolving regional disparities. This paper focuses on the questions of why labour mobility is low in the EU and how it is possible that it remains low. We explore whether changes in male and female labour participation act as an important alternative adjustment mechanism. We answer this question in the affirmative. We argue that female labour participation is very important in adjusting to regional disparities.

Asylum seekers in Europe: the warm glow of a hot potato

The Common European Asylum System calls for increased coordination of the European Union (EU) countries’ policies towards asylum seekers and refugees. In this paper, we provide a formal analysis of the effects of coordination, explicitly modelling the democratic process through which policy is determined. In a symmetric, two-country citizen-candidate setup, in which accepting asylum seekers in one country generates a cross-border externality in the other, we show that coordination is desirable. Internalizing the externality leads to a welfare improvement over the non-cooperative outcome. However, contrary to suggestions by many observers, we show that allowing for cross-country transfers in the cooperative outcome leads to a welfare inferior outcome because the possibility of compensation exacerbates strategic delegation effects.

Studying children in armed conflict: data production,social indicators and analysis

The authors seek to give an overview of ways in which social indicators relevant to research on children affected by armed conflict can be developed, and how such research can be carried out. Technical and methodological challenges involved in this pursuit are discussed. It is argued that data production must consider issues of definition and delineation of the phenomenon of war-affected children more actively than it does currently. An analytical approach is proposed, in which children’s characteristics in different situations, or in different stages of conflict, may be used as intakes to understanding how the social processes pertaining to life histories of children in armed conflict are created and reproduced.

Human Well Being: A Decile Group Analysis on Indian Household Data

This is an attempt to measure human well being across different sections of the society in India over time where sections have been made in terms of ten decile groups of income. In this context, the extent to which rural sector is lagging behind the urban sector is another dimension of the study. The study uses grouped household data, collected and made available by National Sample Survey Organisation between 1987–1988 and 1999–2000. The inter decile group analysis does not show parity in the attainment levels of the individual indicators of human well being, although an overall systematic inter temporal betterment for each decile group is very clear. Rural–urban gaps in terms of attainment of these indicators is also not so small.

Measuring Youth Development: A Nonparametric Cross-Country ‘Youth Welfare Index’

This paper develops an empirical methodology for the construction of a synthetic multi-dimensional cross-country comparison of the performance of governments around the world in improving the livelihood of their younger population. The devised ‘Youth Welfare Index’ is based on the nonparametric Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) methodology and allows for cross-country benchmarking and comparison over time. The value added of the youth index is to produce country-specific rankings and trace performance evolution with respect to indicators solely centered on youth, unlike other development indicators like the Human Development Index (HDI) which bundles many social and development indicators.

Socioeconomic Indicators for Analyzing Convergence: The Case of Greece: 1960–2004

The purpose of this paper is to use socioeconomic indicators for analyzing convergence within Greece at regional (NUTS II) and prefecture levels (NUTS III) since 1960. We use two alternative approaches. The first one is based on the coefficient of variation and the second one on quality of life rankings. We confirm the decline of regional inequalities in Greece, with the exclusion of the 1980s. Regions with increased tourist and trade activity are also regions with high quality of life. Border regions are usually the laggards of social and economic development.

Sacrificing Their Careers for Their Families? An Analysis of the Penalty to Motherhood in Europe

This paper examines the extent of and the mechanisms behind the penalty to motherhood in six European countries. Each country provides different levels of support for maternal employment allowing us to determine institutional effects on labour market outcome. While mothers tend to earn less than non-mothers, the penalty to motherhood is considerably lower in countries with policy support for working mothers. The paper establishes the United Kingdom and West Germany to have the least policy support for working mothers as well as the largest penalties to motherhood.

Measuring Changes in Family Wellbeing in New Zealand 1981–2001

Since the mid-1980s, New Zealand has experienced extensive economic, social and political reforms. The economic impact of these changes has been closely monitored and much commented upon. However, the social impacts of the reforms on different family types are less well understood. This paper outlines a project designed to monitor how the reforms impacted upon specific family types via the use of indicators of family wellbeing constructed from census data. These indicators show that for a range of family types, the reforms of the 1980s and 1990s varied in their impact, with single-parent families faring worst.

Education,Human Development and Quality of Life: Measurement Issues and Implications for India

This paper analyses and compares the measurement of indicators and variables in the construction of education index in Human Development Index (HDI) at the global, national and 18 sub-national human development reports in India since 1990. The results show non-comparability of measurement of the education indicators and variables. This implies that vertical and horizontal comparability of HDI may not be plausible for India. Implications of these analyses are highlighted for measurement of quality of life indices with special reference to physical quality of life index. Policy lessons are derived for future measurement of education index for India in particular, and other developing countries in general.

The Extent of Economic Vulnerability in the Canadian Labour Market and Federal Jurisdiction: Is There a Role for Labour Standards?

This paper characterizes vulnerable workers in Canada and the federal jurisdiction, based upon characteristics such as employment status, demographic characteristics, and job characteristics, and identifies areas in which labour standards may have a role. Based on this analysis, the paper evaluates the potential for labour standards to address economic vulnerability, focusing on labour standards policies aimed at wages and benefits, hours, and employment arrangements. In addition, the analysis considers the extent to which labour standards are likely to reach vulnerable workers. The results suggest several potential roles for labour standards and highlights policy implications.

Civil Society Involvement in International Development Cooperation: In Search for Data

Participatory decision making seems to be the new development paradigm in international cooperation. It is still a long way, however, to achieve the objectives that are formulated by the international development actors. Non-state actors are only limitedly involved in the policy decision-making. In this paper, we argue that when these actors take their commitment towards civil society organisations serious, more efforts can be made to improve the available data and indicators on these actors’ policy involvement. We discuss the most important existing databases on civil society’s policy participation and find that only limited data is available. This means that there exist opportunities to: first, extend and refine the existing data and indicators on the policy involvement of these actors; and second, include these data and indicators in the assessment exercises of international development organisations. In addition, we observe a difference, between the available data on the traditional social partners and the new civil society organisations. Therefore, we argue that more research, data collection and the elaboration of indices, on the various policy involvement mechanisms of new civil society organisations would be a welcome contribution to the field. Furthermore the opportunity exists to examine the relation with other governance variables, such as accountability, transparency and rule of law.

Labour market integration of immigrants: estimating local authority effects

We propose a method for computing indicators of the relative success of local authorities at integrating new immigrants in the labour market, taking account of differences in characteristics of immigrants and local labour markets. The indicator for integration success is based on mean duration from date of residence permit to start of an employment spell. We apply this method to a Danish administrative dataset. Correcting for differences in immigrant characteristics and local labour market conditions has an important impact on the estimated ranking of local authorities. We investigate how robust the ranking is with respect to changes in the specification of criteria for integration success and controls.

Avowed Happiness in Confucian Asia: Ascertaining its Distribution,Patterns, and Sources

This study reviewed three philosophical accounts of happiness, and then tested those accounts with the Asiabarometer surveys conducted in six Confucian societies during the summer of 2006. Statistical analyses of these surveys reveal that East Asians tend to experience happiness to a greater extent when they experience enjoyment together with achievement and/or satisfaction. The preponderance of such multi-dimensional conceptions in all those societies poses a direct challenge to a single dimensional account of happiness in the West. The analyses also reveal that positive assessments of interpersonal relationships matter more than the amount of knowledge or wealth in living a happy life in Confucian societies.

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