Apparent Quality-of-Life in Nations: How Long and Happy People Live

Quality-of-life in nations can be measured by how long and happy people live. This is assessed by combining data on life expectancy drawn from civil registration with survey data on subjective enjoyment of life as a whole. This measure of apparent quality-of-life is a good alternative to current indexes of assumed quality-of-life such as the Human Development Index. Data are available for 67 nations in the 1990s. The number of Happy-Life-Years varies considerably across nations. Switzerland is at the top with 63.0 years and Moldavia at the bottom with 20.5 years. China is in the middle with an average of 46.7. Happy lifetime has risen considerably in advanced nations over the last decade.People live longer and happier in nations characterised by economic affluence, freedom and justice. Together these three societal qualities explain 66% of the cross-national variance in Happy-Life-Years. Income equality and generous social security do not appear to be required for a long and happy life.     

Happy life-expectancy

One of the aims of social indicator research is to develop a comprehensive measure of quality-of-life in nations that is analogous to GNP in economic indicator research. For that purpose, several multi dimensional indexes have been proposed. In addition to economic performance, these also acknowledge the nation's success in matters like schooling and social equality. The most current indicator of this type is the ‘Human Development Index’. In this approach QOL is measured by input; the degree to which society provides conditions deemed beneficial (‘presumed’ QOL). The basic problem is that one never knows to what extent the cherished provisions are really good for people. An alternative is measuring QOL in nations by output, and consider how well people actually flourish in the country. This ‘apparent’ QOL can be measured by the degree to which citizens live long and happily. This conception is operationalized by combining registration based estimates of length-of-life, with survey data on subjective appreciation-of-life. Life-expectancy in years is multiplied by average happiness on a 0–1 scale. The product is named ‘Happy Life-Expectancy’ (HLE), and can be interpreted as the number of years the average citizen in a country lives happily at a certain time. HLE was assessed in 48 nations in the early 1990's. It appears to be highest in North-West European nations (about 60) and lowest in Africa (below 35). HLE scores are systematically higher in nations that are most affluent, free, educated, and tolerant. Together, these country-characteristics explain 70% of the statistical variance in HLE. Yet HLE is not significantly related to unemployment, state welfare and income equality, nor to religiousness and trust in institutions. HLE does not differ either with military dominance and population pressure. The conclusion is that HLE qualifies as the envisioned comprehensive social indicator. It has both clear substantive meaning (happy life-years) and theoretical significance (ultimate output measure). HLE differentiates well. Its correlations fit most assumptions about required input, but also challenge some. The indicator is likely to have political appeal.     

Rising Happiness in Nations 1946–2004: A Reply to Easterlin

The ‘Easterlin paradox’ holds that economic growth does not add to the quality-of-life and that this appears in the fact that average happiness in nations has not risen in the last few decades. The latest trend data show otherwise. Average happiness has increased slightly in rich nations and considerably in the few poor nations for which data are available. Since longevity has also increased, the average number of happy life years has increased at an unprecedented rate since the 1950s.     

Greater Happiness for a Greater Number: Did the Promise of Enlightenment Come True?

In the eighteenth century ‘Enlightened’ thinkers challenged the belief that happiness exists only in Heaven. They claimed that happiness is possible in earthly life and foresaw that greater happiness would be achieved using reason. Did this promise of greater happiness come true? Several scholars doubt that we have become any happier and some claim that happiness has declined. These critical claims are tested using the time trend data available in the World Database of Happiness, which cover the period 1950–2010 and involve 1531 data points in 67 nations yielding 199 time-series ranging for 10 to more than 40 years. The analysis reveals that happiness has risen in most nations. The average yearly rise in the 67 nations was +0.012 on scale 0–10, which equals a rise of one full point every 83 years. At this rate happiness must have improved by more than two points over the past two centuries and, together with increasing longevity, this denotes an unprecedented rise in happy life years.     

Well-Being <Emphasis Type="Italic">in</Emphasis> Nations and Well-Being <Emphasis Type="Italic">of</Emphasis> Nations

Human societies cannot exist without human beings and human beings cannot exist without a society. Still there can be a conflict of interest between the individual and society and there are historical examples of societies prospering at the cost of its members, and examples of people thriving at the cost of society. The degree of conflict or synergy will vary over time. This begs the question: How it is today? To what extend does the well-being of contemporary nations go together with the well-being of their inhabitants? In a system theoretical perspective one can distinguish four kinds of being ‘well’: (1) good external conditions, (2) appropriate internal functioning, (3) positive external effects and (4) system maintenance. At the level of nations these aspects of well-being cannot be meaningfully combined in one measure, hence each aspect is measured separately. At the level of individuals a fairly comprehensive measure is how long and happy people live. Data was available for 92 nations in the early 2000s. Analysis of these data shows much correspondence between the well-being of contemporary nations and average well-being of citizens in these nations. This appears in strong correlations between Happy Life Years and (a) the position of the nation in the world system, (b) the functioning of public institutions in the nation, (c) the productivity of the nation, and (d) the stability of the system. There are plausible explanations for this connection, one is that modern society fits human nature fairly well and another that happy citizens make a better society. So, there is no great conflict between the individual and society, at least not at this moment.     

Life is Getting Better: Societal Evolution and Fit with Human Nature

Human society has changed much over the last centuries and this process of ‘modernization’ has profoundly affected the lives of individuals; currently we live quite different lives from those forefathers lived only five generations ago. There is difference of opinion as to whether we live better now than before and consequently there is also disagreement as to whether we should continue modernizing or rather try to slow the process down. Quality-of-life in a society can be measured by how long and happy its inhabitants live. Using these indicators I assess whether societal modernization has made life better or worse. Firstly I examine findings of present day survey research. I start with a cross-sectional analysis of 143 nations in the years 2000–2008 and find that people live longer and happier in today’s most modern societies. Secondly I examine trends in modern nations over the last decade and find that happiness and longevity have increased in most cases. Thirdly I consider the long-term and review findings from historical anthropology, which show that we lived better in the early hunter-gatherer society than in the later agrarian society. Together these data suggest that societal evolution has worked out differently for the quality of human life, first negatively, in the change from a hunter-gatherer existence to agriculture, and next positively, in the more recent transformation from an agrarian to an industrial society. We live now longer and happier than ever before.     

Contentment and Affect in the Estimation of Happiness

How do we assess how happy we are? One theory is that we compare life-as-it-is with standards of how-life-should-be. In this view, happiness emerges from a cognitive evaluation that draws on socially constructed standard of the good life. Another theory holds that we rather infer happiness on the basis of how well we feel most of the time. In that view, happiness is an unreasoned affective experience that roots in the gratification of universal human needs. One question that emerges from this discussion is whether these are really independent ways of evaluating life. If so, a next question is what their relative weight is in the evaluation. These questions are addressed at the nation level using data of the Gallup World Poll over the years 2006–2010. This survey in 127 nations involves not only a question on overall life satisfaction, but also a more cognitively focused question on how close one’s life is to the best possible and a series of questions on yesterday’s mood. Analysis of average scores in nations shows that mood and contentment are much intertwined, but also add to overall life satisfaction independently, the former more than the latter.     

The Role of Spousal Income in the Wife’s Happiness

Few studies have examined spousal income in the context of happiness. This paper analyzes the Indonesia family life survey and finds a positive relationship between the husband’s income and his wife’s happiness. Specifically, a 100 % increase in the husband’s income is related to a 0.72 % point increase in his wife expressing very happy, which is about 11 % of the proportion expressing that response. Surprisingly, among the husband’s characteristics, only his income (along with health) is statistically significantly related to his wife’s happiness. This positive relationship is particularly strong among old, educated, and poor (in absolute and relative terms) urban residents.     

Exploring Quality of Life During the Transition from School to Work in Chile

Data from Chile’s national household survey (CASEN) for the years 1990–2003 reveal that the transition process from school to active working life has been postponed over the course of the 13 year period while its duration has steadily increased, resulting in a delayed integration into the labour force. This finding is consistent with experiences in other countries as reported by the OECD and the ILO. The present study explores an approach to the development of indicators, currently non-existent, for describing the school-to-work transition in Chile from a quality-of-life perspective following a Swedish paradigm. A typology is proposed based on principal variables (factors) derived from a multiple correspondence exploratory analysis of the 2003 National Youth Survey data, generating a set of transition profiles. The analysis shows that experiencing the school-to-work transition simultaneously with other passages such as the family transition (becoming the head of a household) is decisive in evaluating young people’s quality of life.     

Does Good Governance Enhance Happiness: A Cross Nation Study

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the efficiency of the countries over the period of 10 years by applying data envelopment analysis (DEA). Based on rational and factual parameters such as freedom of press, freedom of religion, percentage of export in Gross Domestic Product (GDP), index of globalization, life expectancy at birth, gender ratio etc., this paper attempts to measure the efficiency of happiness. A combination of social and economic factors has been used to measure technical efficiency. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, it measures the relative efficiency of all the countries included in the study. The nations have been ranked as per their relative efficiency and the peer group has been formed. Second a comparison between the rich and the poor countries have been done to test empirically whether the economic growth enhances the happiness among people. Presently, more than 3,000 studies have been published on happiness and Veenhoven in 2004 created a database called World Database of Happiness. The World Database of Happiness has attempted to present the available research findings on happiness. Part of the findings on happiness in nations is available in ‘States of nations’. For the research purpose, States of Nations and the data published by have been considered. Although happiness has been quantified and the existing literature has sufficient empirical evidences of the same, in the present context, the relative efficiency has been calculated for the countries on basis of objective and subjective happiness parameters. As per the literature, happiness has two aspects (1) objective and (2) subjective. Objective parameters are external to the individuals and covers material living parameters viz. GDP growth, income, nutrition, mortality rate, literacy etc. However, Subjective indicators measure the quality of life of the individuals. These are summarized as ‘‘subjective well-being’’. The various parameters considered in the study capture different aspects of happiness. The result shows how the government can increase the happiness of the people by analyzing the behavior and expectations. People express their preference explicitly about political parties, religion believes, law and order situation, trust in official institutions etc. Although, the behavior of people largely depends upon availability of goods and services in the market, the government can make budgets according to priority or preferences of people. Another way to increase happiness can be done by analyzing the peer group, which is an outcome of DEA. This shows the nations which are similar in terms of their economic and social conditions. The government can compare the prevailing conditions in different countries that improve the condition in their respective country. This could be an effective method as some of the parameters can be replicable in order to make people happier. The limitation of this study is lack of availability of data for many countries. As the number of countries increases, a change in the relative efficiency can be observed. Therefore, a future study can be conducted where the relevant data can be collected and a more global result can be obtained.     

Remeasuring ageing in Hong Kong SAR; or ‘keeping the demographic window open’

Hong Kong SAR has among both the lowest fertility rates and highest life expectancy in the world. Under the current calculation of the Old Age Dependency Ratio (OADR), Hong Kong is, understandably, ageing extremely rapidly. This is a cause of significant concern among policy makers. However, OADR assumes that the entire population aged above 65 is both ‘old’ and ‘dependent’, neither of which is clearly defined, and that all aged below 65 are active in the labour force. Furthermore, because the rate is fundamentally based upon a European/North American model of pension and retirement it is arguably less appropriate to areas of the world where retirement ages are more fluid and pension systems less developed. We apply and extend a method for Hong Kong, designed by Sanderson and Scherbov, to ‘remeasure ageing’ by taking remaining life expectancy as the constant, rather than years lived by using projected life tables and 1 × 1 population projections. In doing so, we show that Sanderson and Scherbov’s new ‘prospective’ measurements of ageing more accurately reflect the increased longevity and vitality of Hong Kong’s population. Rather than passively accepting fate as a ‘rapidly ageing’ population, East Asian economies can be active in rethinking society’s relationship to work and other activities across the life-cycle. By adapting existing measurements to take into account the different welfare regimes in East Asia, we can radically alter the timeframe in which population ageing becomes ‘critical’. This allows more time to develop a more holistic life-course view of the relationship between work, longevity and fertility and to actively tackle ageing in an optimistic way.     

Subjective Quality of Life of Young Europeans. Feeling Happy but who Knows why?

Latest developments in modern societies have altered living circumstances. Upcoming insecurities concerning employment and family relationships make life more and more incalculable. Especially young adults throughout the modern world are forced to rethink their life concepts and to desist from the lives of former generations. As difficulties to achieve a successful life increase, one could assume that the young are confronted with the impossibility of feeling happy and satisfied with their lives anymore. Yet, latest social surveys prove wrong. Although increasing unemployment, lower net income and single parenthood make life more difficult for the young, they still enjoy very high subjective quality of life in comparison to the older population. Throughout the paper I argue that it is not the objective conditions that make young adults (15–29 years old) feel overwhelmingly happy. Looking for other sources of explanation of high quality of life among people aged 29 or below, I argue for indicators of social embeddedness as being influential on their assessment of life. But again, the proportion of explained variance is smaller compared to older people. With the help of empirical data taken from the European Social Survey I highlight the differences in life circumstances between the young and the total population. Concerning occupation, habitation (kind of inhabited household) and financial situation, most of the young live under different situations compared to the adult world. But surprisingly, the rates of perceived high quality of life among the young do not vary to such a large extent as among the adults. I show that young adults, often damned to fail social demands because of their withdrawal from social life, are still the most happy in modern (more and more individualizing?) societies. But it gets more difficult to account for the reasons of their happiness.     

Changing Australia’s Age Pension Qualification Age: Modelling Differential Effects by Race

Increasing the age at which people are eligible for the age pension is one mechanism by which governments of developed nations are attempting to manage increasing costs associated with population ageing. In Australia, there are a number of groups within the population who may be affected in unintended ways by increasing the eligibility age to 70 years by the year 2035, as was proposed in the 2014 Federal Budget. Most notably, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (Indigenous) Australians currently with an average at birth life expectancy of 69.1 years for males and 73.7 years for females, nearly 11 years less than non-Indigenous Australians, may be the most affected. This study explores the consequences of the proposed future amendments to the age pension eligibility age, using projections of the likely age structures of future populations to estimate expected years of life remaining after reaching pension age. Despite projected improvements for Indigenous life expectancies, increasing the pension eligibility age under the schedule proposed in the policy would significantly reduce the expected years in post pension age, thus countering some of the anticipated benefits flowing from expected future life expectancy increases. However, if the eligibility age were to be increased more gradually, Indigenous Australians would be afforded a greater opportunity to access age pension benefits, whilst still reducing the length of time the non-Indigenous population is eligible to access the age pension, thus fulfilling policy objectives to manage increasing costs associated with population ageing.     

What Do Happy People Do?

Little attention in the quality-of-life literature has been paid to data on the daily activity patterns of happy and less happy people. Using ratings-scale information from time-diary studies, this article examines the hypothesis that people who describe themselves as happier engage in certain activities more than those who describe themselves as less happy. Based on 34 years of data collected by the General Social Survey (GSS) on social activities and media usage, it is found that people who are happy report being more active in most social activities, in religion and in newspaper reading. On the other hand, happier people report less time watching television, a relation that holds after control for education, marital status and other predictors of happiness. The need to replicate these findings using panel data is highlighted.     

The ‘10 Excess’ Phenomenon in Responses to Survey Questions on Happiness

Happiness in nations is typically measured in surveys using a single question. A common question is: ‘all things considered, how satisfied or dissatisfied are you with your life as-a-whole these days on a scale from 0 to 10?’. The responses typically follow a uni-modal distribution with highest frequencies between 5 and 8. Yet in some nations, the percentage of 10 responses stands out and is higher than the percentage of 9 responses. This is particularly present in Latin America and in the Middle East. In this paper we explore the prevalence of the ‘10-excess’ pattern and check some possible explanations. We conclude that the 10-excess phenomenon is partly due to cultural influence.     

Increment–Decrement Life Table Estimates of Happy Life Expectancy for the U.S. Population

Using large nationally representative longitudinal data on changes in happiness and mortality and multivariate increment–decrement life tables, we assess length of quality life through cohort estimates of happy life expectancies. We examine population-based and status-based life expectancies in absolute term of years and relative term of proportions. We find that happy life expectancies exceed unhappy life expectancies in both absolute and relative terms for the overall population and population in each state of happiness at any given age. Being happy (as opposed to unhappy) at any age brings a longer life and more of the future life spent in happiness. We also examine social differentials in the estimates of happy life expectancy at each age by sex, race, and education. The educational gap in happy life expectancies is larger than the sex and race gaps. For the better educated, longer life consists of a longer happy life and shorter unhappy life in both years and proportions and regardless of happy or unhappy status at any given age.     

Refining Population Health Comparisons: A Multidimensional First Order Dominance Approach

Protest parties are on the rise in several European countries. This development is commonly attributed to a growing dissatisfaction with life and associated with declining quality of life in modern society of the lowest social strata. This explanation is tested in a cross-sectional analysis of voting and life-satisfaction in 63 districts of the city of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, where the share of protest voters increased from 10 % in 1994 to 31 % in 2009. Contrary to this explanation protest voting appeared not to be the most frequent in the least happy districts of Rotterdam, but in the medium happy segment. Also divergent from this explanation was that average happiness in city districts is largely independent of local living conditions, but is rather a matter of personal vulnerability in terms of education, income and health. These results fit alternative explanations in terms of middle class status anxiety.     

Postnatal quality of life — A content analysis of qualitative results to the Mother-Generated Index

Background

The Mother-Generated Index (MGI) assesses postnatal quality of life (QoL) without providing a predefined checklist, thus offering mothers the opportunity to identify areas of life affected by having a baby.