Arts and the quality of life: an Exploratory study

The aim of this investigation was to measure the impact of the arts broadly construed on the quality of life. A randomly drawn household sample of 315 adult residents of Prince George, British Columbia served as the working data-set. Examining zero-order correlations, among other things, it was found that playing a musical instrument a number of times per year was positively associated with general health (r = 0.37), while singing alone a number of hours per week was negatively associated with general health (r = ?0.19). The strongest positive associations with life satisfaction are satisfaction obtained from gourmet cooking and embroidery, needlepoint or cross-stitching, at r = 0.39 andr = 0.32, respectively. The satisfaction obtained from gourmet cooking (r = 0.35) and buying works of art (r = 0.32) were the most positive influences on happiness. The strongest associations with the Index of Subjective Well-Being are the satisfaction obtained from gourmet cooking (r = 0.37) and the satisfaction obtained from knitting or crocheting (r = 0.34). Examining multivariate relations, it was found that eight predictors combined to explain 59% of the variance in life satisfaction scores, with self-esteem satisfaction (β = 0.35) and friendship satisfaction (β = 0.27) most influential. Among the arts-related predictors in the eight, singing alone was fairly influential and negative (β = ?0.18), while the satisfaction obtained from reading to others (β=0.08) and the Index of Arts as Self-Health Enhancers (β = 0.11) were somewhat less influential. When the arts-related predictors were combined with a set of domain satisfaction predictors, total explanatory power was increased by only 3 percentage points. Seven predictors could explain 58% of the variance in satisfaction with the overall quality of life scores. Of the arts-related predictors, only time spent going to non-art museums was significant (β = 0.07). Arts-related predictors did not increase explanatory power at all beyond that obtained from domain satisfaction variables alone. Eight predictors explained 42% of the variance in happiness scores, with the most influential predictors including satisfaction with self-esteem (β = 0.37) and financial security (β = 0.21), followed by the Index of Arts as Self-Developing Activities (β = 0.18). Arts-related predictors added 3 percentage points of explanatory power to that obtained from domain satisfaction scores. Seven predictors could explain 65% of the variance in scores on the Index of Subjective Well-Being, led by self-esteem satisfaction (β = 0.35) and financial security satisfaction (β = 0.30). The Index of Arts as Community Builders had a modest influence (β = 0.11), but all together, arts-related predictors increased our total explanatory power by a single percentage point. Summarizing these multivariate results, it seems fair to say that, relative to the satisfaction obtained from other domains of life, the arts had a very small impact on the quality of life (measured in four somewhat different ways) of a sample of residents of Prince George who generally cared about the arts. Even in absolute terms, arts-related activities could only explain from 5% to 11% of the variance in four plausible measures of the self-perceived quality of respondents’ lives. By comparing the composition of our sample with census data from 2001, it was demonstrated that the sample was not representative of residents of our city. It would, therefore, be wrong to generalize our findings to the whole population of Prince George or to any larger population.     

A Measure Whose Time has Come: Formalizing Time Poverty

Poverty remains a primary public policy issue, and a large literature has discussed the limitations of an income poverty measure. Using income as an indicator of poverty is a helpful simplification designed to capture ability to meet consumption needs. We argue that time is a basic economic resource allocated to create well-being along with income. Time is a scarce resource that individuals and households must allocate to produce goods, obtain services, and pursue rest and relaxation. Time poverty has been proposed as a complement to income poverty, yet it remains a relatively unknown measure in both policy and research spheres. The many ways time poverty is conceptualized and measured across studies has limited its adoption. To help familiarize readers with time poverty, we apply basic tenets of income poverty measurement to time. We conduct a survey of the theoretical and empirical literature discussing similarities, differences, and the pros and cons of different approaches to time poverty. In particular, inconsistent definition and categorization of necessary and discretionary time has been a barrier to the transparent application of time poverty in the literature, and we outline guidance on defining necessary and discretionary time for future studies. Finally, we outline future research directions for time poverty.     

Aspirations of Migrants and Returns to Human Capital Investment

Although there is adequate literature on the topic of state-employer collusion, this literature is barely underpinned in any theoretical framework. This article attempts to fill this theoretical lacuna by revisiting Gouldner’s (Patterns of industrial bureaucracy: a case study of modern factory administration, The Free Press, New York, 1954a) pioneering theoretical framework on patterns of bureaucracy, and extends his concept of mock bureaucracy to develop a new concept called ‘mock state bureaucracy’ to illustrate state-employer collusion in controlling workers in plants in developing third world economies. The article revisits and extends Gouldner’s (1954a) unit of analysis from the ‘firm’ level to the ‘state’ level and argues that the new concept mock state bureaucracy provides a better illustration of the state-employer collusion. The article argues that both ‘state’ and ‘employer’ are important units of analysis and they should be brought back to the centre stage of any discourse on employment relations of developing countries.     

Twenty Years of Research on the Relationship Between Economic and Social Performance: A Meta-analysis Approach

This study examines the role of political efficacy and social networks in rural China to understand the social characteristics that might affect an individual’s disposition to join in public deliberations. A model is developed and empirically tested by Partial Least Squares analysis. This shows active involvement in public deliberation to be positively influenced by political efficacy (with external political efficacy being a partial mediator), high internal or external political efficacy, and a high internal efficacy leading to high external political efficacy. Social networks have a moderating effect, individuals with a high social network status having an enhanced positive internal political efficacy-public deliberation involvement but weakened positive external political efficacy-public deliberation involvement. The research advances the theoretical understanding of complex political psycho-behavior relationships and provided insights into the role of social settings. The findings could also help boost deliberative democracy in such limited democratic societies as China.     

Quality of Life in Intentional Communities

The present study was initiated to investigate levels and predictors of wellbeing among inhabitants of intentional communities (ICs). An anonymous, Internet-based questionnaire was distributed to US and Canadian ICs. Responses were obtained from 913 members. Wellbeing was measured by the widely used satisfaction with life scale (SWLS). Hierarchical linear regression analyses were run to test the predictive validity of Social support, Identity fusion, Meaning in life, Community satisfaction and Life change, and Religious activity above and beyond demographic variables and personality traits. Mean scores on the SWLS were estimated to 5.27 and 5.47 (1–7 scale) for men and women, respectively. The full model explained 41.4% of the variance for men and 38.2% for women. Personality explained 13.4 (men) and 14.4% (women) of the variation, while demographic variables only had a minor impact. Overall, presence of Meaning in life and Social support were the most important predictors. The IC inhabitants reported wellbeing on par with the highest scores previously published. The findings support the contention that sustainability, in the form of a communal lifestyle of low ecological footprint, may be promoted without forfeiting wellbeing.     

Considering the Extremely Poor: Multidimensional Poverty Measurement for Germany

This paper applies the Alkire and Foster (J Public Econ 95:476–487, 2011) index of multidimensional poverty to German data. This is done with respect to the politically most important dimensions of poverty mentioned in the German Federal Government’s report on poverty and wealth. Additionally, a modification of the identification step of the Alkire–Foster index is proposed to guarantee that individuals, who are extremely poor in only few dimensions, are not omitted by the index.     

Religion and Gender Equality Worldwide: A Country-Level Analysis

Conceptually, the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS; Diener et al. in J Pers Assess 49(1):71–75, 1985) emphasizes evaluations comparing actual and expected life circumstances. Contrastingly we developed the Harmony in Life Scale (HILS) emphasizing psychological balance and flexibility in life. Study 1 (476 participants) developed the HILS. In Study 2 participants (N = 787, T1; N = 545, T2) answered well-being related questionnaires and generated words/texts related to HIL/SWL. The HILS yields satisfactory statistical properties, correlates as expected to well-being related scales, whilst HIL/SWL form a two-factor model. Hierarchical regressions reveal that HILS explains considerably more unique variance than SWLS in most included measures. Quantitative semantic analyses (employing latent semantic analyses) on words related to HIL/SWL reveal that they differ significantly in their semantic content. Word frequency analyses show that harmony significantly relate to peace, balance, etc. and satisfaction with job, money, etc. The HILS demonstrates validity, reliability, and uniqueness complementing the SWLS in forming a more holistic understanding of subjective well-being.     

Fertility Behaviour and Wealth Situation in Nigeria: Evidence from 2013 Demographic and Health Survey

With the growing interest in evaluation of quality of life, emerging number of methods are presented. Each contribution varies depending on the matter of interest, and all of them address the issue of subjective weighting factors. The objective of this paper is to explore possibilities to enhance Better Life ranking methodology, available from the Better Life initiative website, using I-distance method. The result was twofold: firstly, we pointed out potential shortcomings of subjectively chosen weights of Better Life ranking methodology by employing our I-distance approach. Secondly, we provided detailed information on how each Better Life indicator contributes to the final position and emphasize the essential indicators in the process of ranking. We have collected the latest available data for 2014, including all 24 indicators of the Better Life composite index. After that we have compared the two ways of rankings, i.e. the I-distance ranking and the Better Life ranking, emphasizing the improvement offered by the I-distance methodology. Further, through iterative exclusion of indicators based on the level of their significance, we have reached the highest quality of the model. That model includes the following six indicators: personal earnings, water quality, life satisfaction, household net adjusted disposable income, employment rate, rooms per person. Hereby, we have compared and presented ranking changes at each iteration for the top 10 countries, which offer a level of consistency in their rank. In addition, one of the objectives is to help policymakers focus on the key indicators in order to improve the ranking of the country, showing governments and administrations which indicators are the most important to invest into. Moreover, our approach could be the foundation for impartial framework of the quality of life’s assessment, independent of subjectively formed weighting factors.     

Ability drain: size,impact, and comparison with brain drain under alternative immigration policies

Ability drain’s (AD) impact seems economically significant, with 30% of US Nobel laureates since 1906 being immigrants, and immigrants or their children founding 40% of Fortune 500 companies. Nonetheless, while brain drain (BD) and gain (BG) have been studied extensively, AD has not. I examine migration’s impact on ability (a), education (h), and productive human capital or “skill” s =s(a,?h), for source country residents and migrants under (a) the points system (PS) which accounts for h and (b) the “vetting” system (VS) which accounts for s (e.g., US H-1B program). The findings are as follows: (i) Migration reduces (raises) residents’ (migrants’) average ability, with an ambiguous (positive) impact on average education and skill, and net skill drain, SD, likelier than net BD; (ii) these effects increase with ability’s inequality or variance, are greater under VS than PS, and hurt source countries; (iii) the model and two empirical studies suggest average AD?≥?BD for educated US immigrants, with real income about twice the home country income; and (iv) SD holds for any BD and for a very small AD (7.4% of our estimate). Policy implications are provided.     

How are the Kids Doing? How do We Know?

With a focus on the United States, this paper addresses the basic social indicators question: How are we doing? More specifically, with respect to children, how are our kids (including adolescents and youths) doing? These questions can be addressed by comparisons: (1) to past historical values, (2) to other contemporaneous units (e.g., comparisons among subpopulations, states, regions, countries), or (3) to goals or other externally established standards. The Child and Youth Well-Being Index (CWI), which we have developed over the past decade, uses all three of these points of comparison. The CWI is a composite index based on 28 social indicator time series of various aspects of the well-being of children and youth in American society that date back to 1975, which is used as a base year for measuring changes (improvements or deterioration) in subsequent years. The CWI is evidence-based not only in the sense that it uses time series of empirical data for its construction, but also because the 28 indicators are grouped into seven domains of well-being or areas of social life that have been found to define the conceptual space of the quality of life in numerous studies of subjective well-being. Findings from research using the CWI reported in the paper include: (1) trends in child and youth well-being in the United States over time, (2) international comparisons, and (3) best-practice analyses.     

Measuring Community Economic Resilience in Australia: Estimates of Recent Levels and Trends

We measure changes in community economic resilience (CER) across geo-locations in Australia between 2006 and 2011, a time span characterised by major natural and economic shocks. We build an index of potential CER that captures communities’ stocks of human, social, natural, physical and financial capitals, levels of economic diversity and accessibility to service centres. Using Census data and the ARIA index, we resort to principal component analysis to generate CER indexes at statistical area level 1, which is our community proxy. Our analysis of index values provides a number of useful insights. First, there was a statistically significant improvement over time in the overall CER index in all states and regions. Second, our CER measures improved at a different pace across regions and states while their rank remained mostly unchanged. Third, CER improved over time in social and physical capital and accessibility terms, but declined in human, natural, financial capital and diversity terms. Fourth, communities with a high economic diversity level reported higher capital stock except for natural capital, and communities with a low accessibility level had lower capital stock except for social and natural capital. Finally, CER has a long-term positive association with household income.     

A Decade of Sub-national Pro-poor Growth in Pakistan

The literature on subjective well-being has highlighted the negative effects associated with the restrictions and inequality imposed by the hukou system on China’s rural population. However, quantifying the cost of holding a rural hukou has generally been challenging because it can reflect unobserved individual characteristics related to educational and occupational choices. Thanks to RUMiC, a new longitudinal database on China, this limitation can be overcome by exploiting exogenous changes in hukou status due to land expropriation. The results support that receiving an urban hukou substantially enhances subjective well-being within the household, especially for males. The results complement a growing literature on subjective well-being focusing on China.     

Marketing and Quality of Life: A Model for Improving Perinatal Health Status

Introduction: A marketing/business model using non-traditional Quality of Life measures was developed to assess perinatal health status on a micro-geographic level. This perinatal health status needs assessment study for Georgia South Central Region was conducted for the years 1994–1999. The model may be applied to any geographic unit in the U.S. – from a block group level to a state or a region. Methodology: An Infant Health Risk Score was created for each county and census tract by calculating the Z-scores of various Medical, Lifestyle, and Access variables so as to construct a Quality of Life Index. The scores identified the areas in the region that were at high risk for certain medical, lifestyle, and access variables (i.e., high risk for preterm births, low education levels, and poor access to perinatal services). A marketing tool, Claritas PRIZM Clusters, was used to identify a specific cluster and associated marketing information for each census tract within the region. Results: The Infant Health Quality of Life Risk Scores were linked with the PRIZM cluster marketing data to target areas in the region that exhibit high risk medical, lifestyle, and access scores. Health promotion and disease prevention strategies were developed using a marketing/business model. Specifically, media usage and consumer behavior purchasing patterns were identified and processed for every high risk area in the region. The categories for media usage were television, radio, and magazines and the categories for consumer behavior included restaurants, food items, and shopping locations. Discussion: The Perinatal Region is developing strategies to implement the media usage and consumer behavior marketing information to focus their prevention efforts to the high risk areas in the region based on the Quality of Life Measurements. Linking marketing business tools with a Quality of Life health status needs assessment has significant potential for improving the planning, the evaluation, and the focus of prevention efforts.     

Health Literacy and Happiness: A Community-based Study

The relationship between health literacy and happiness was explored using a cross-sectional survey of community-dwelling older primary-care patients. Health literacy status was estimated with the following previously validated question: “How confident are you in filling out medical forms by yourself?” Happiness was measured using an adapted Subjective Happiness Scale. Of all patients (n = 383), 62% were younger than 65, 28% were men, and 39% were African–American. In bivariate analysis, health literacy was positively correlated with happiness (Spearman’s ρ = 0.261; p < 0.001). Multivariable logistic regression revealed that lowest-quartile happiness was associated with poverty (OR: 2.25; 95% CI: 1.17–4.31), unfavorable self-rated health (OR: 4.16; 95% CI: 2.34–7.40), and lower health literacy (OR: 2.31; 95% CI: 1.23–4.32). The results suggest that inadequate health literacy may be an obstacle to happiness above and beyond its effect on poverty and health, and offers partial support for the inclusion of general and health literacy scores in composite quality-of-life and human development indices. Though alternative explanations are possible, we speculate that the association between health literacy and happiness might be mediated by a sense of personal control.     

Health,Quality of Homecare Services and Quality of Life: A Case of Frail Older Immigrant Adults

The theory about missing links of economic growth often lags behind the empirical estimations of such links. A consensus has emerged that ethnic fractionalization has a negative impact on growth, also when controlled for income inequality. Often, although implicitly, the assumed channel is social cohesion. We analyse the effect of fractionalization on social cohesion with a different inequality measure, namely a social measure of inequality: the Inclusion of Minorities Index. Our results indicate that it is social exclusion, which reduces social cohesion, rather than diversity as such. We conclude that future studies of social cohesion and its relation to growth may benefit from using measures of social exclusion next to ethnic diversity.     

The Role of Financial Development and Economic Misery on Life Expectancy: Evidence from Post Financial Reforms in India

Several survey studies have found that internal migrants report lower levels of happiness than locals, even after accounting for socio-economic factors. Traditional global self-ratings reveal that the migrant–local happiness-gap is also present in the data we present. The reasons for the migrant–local happiness-gap are as yet unclear. This paper aims to open this ‘black box’ by exploring the role of daily activities among a population that has generally been overlooked despite their high migration frequency: young adults. An innovative smartphone application is used that combines two techniques for multiple moment assessment: the experience sampling method and the day reconstruction method. Based on the application data, we examine whether internal migrants spend their time differently than locals and in which situations they feel noticeably less happy than locals. The data reveal that internal migrants distribute less time to happiness-producing activities such as active leisure, social drinking/parties, and activities outside home/work/transit. Internal migrants feel less happy than locals when spending time with friends and while eating. Possible explanations focusing on the role of social capital are discussed. Further analyses reveal that daily life experiences greatly enhance the explanation of the migrant–local happiness-gap. This paper demonstrates the potential value of real-time data and phone applications in solving happiness puzzles.     

The Relation Between Life Satisfaction and the Material Situation: A Re-Evaluation Using Alternative Measures

Asking clients to document their perceived quality of life during and after intervention is a popular approach employed by helping professionals to evaluate intervention programs. In the Project Positive Adolescent Training through Holistic Social Programmes (P.A.T.H.S.), students participating in the Experimental Implementation Phase and Full Implementation Phase were invited to write reflective journals in the form of weekly diaries to reveal their perceptions and feelings regarding the program and the perceived benefits of the program. Based on multiple studies, results showed that the respondents generally (a) had positive views on the program, (b) had positive views on the instructors, and (c) perceived that they had acquired competencies at the societal, familial, interpersonal and personal levels and their quality of life was promoted after joining the program. Acknowledging the limitations of diaries, the present qualitative findings provide support for the effectiveness of the Tier 1 Program of the Project P.A.T.H.S. in Hong Kong.     

Tenure and Spending Within UK Households at the End of the Recent Recession

Housing costs form a substantial share of aggregate demand in the UK. This study examines the distribution of total expenditure-to-income by homeownership status at the end of the recent recession in 2010. Multivariate quantile regressions uncover four important points. First, owner-occupiers in England have considerably higher mean spending ratios than their peers in other parts of the UK; an indication of their wealthier status. Second, the average spending ratio for residential-occupiers in all UK regions, with the exception of Northern Ireland, is significantly higher than the mean ratio for tenants in both private and public properties. In this last region, the spending rate for private tenants is more prominent. Third, the disparity in the expenditure ratio between owner-occupiers and tenants is significantly more pronounced in England. Fourth, renters in public housing in Scotland and Wales have much higher spending ratios than their counterparts in private properties, reflecting a greater overall social security provided by the devolved government there. Policy implications allied with heterogeneity in the consumption effect of housing wealth across the different homeownership cohorts is discussed.     

Measures of Inequality: Application to Happiness in Nations

What is a good measure for happiness inequality? In the context of this question, we have developed an approach in which individual happiness values in a sample are considered as elements of a set and inequality as a binary relation on that set. The total number of inequality relations, each weighed by the distance on the scale of measurement between the pair partners, has been adopted as an indicator for the inequality of the distribution as a whole. For models in which the happiness occurs as a continuous latent variable, an analogous approach has been developed on the basis of differentials. In principle, this fundamental approach results in a (zero) minimum value, and, more importantly, also in a maximum value. In the case where happiness is measured using a k-points scale, the maximum inequality is obtained if all ½N sample members select the lowest possible rating (Eq. 1) and the other ½N the highest possible one (k). This finding even applies to the truly ordinal case, i.e., if the distances between the successive ratings on the scale are unknown. It is, however, impossible to quantify the inequality of some measured sample distribution, unless all distances of the k categories of the scale of measurement are known or at least estimated, either on an empirical basis or on the basis of assumptions. In general, the numerical application of the method to continuous distributions is very complicated. An exploration on the basis of a relatively simple model with a linear probability density function suggests that the inequality of a beta probability distribution with shape parameters a and b increases as the value of these parameters decreases. A contour plot, obtained by numerical integration, demonstrates this relationship in a quantitative way. This approach is applicable to judge the aptness of common statistics of dispersion, among which the standard deviation and the Gini coefficient. The former is shown to be more appropriate than the latter for measuring inequality of happiness within nations.     

The Determinants of Life Satisfaction Among Adolescents: The Role of Metacognitive Awareness and Self-Efficacy

This study investigated the associations among the life satisfaction, metacognitive awareness and perceived self-efficacy. It also investigated whether life satisfaction, metacognitive awareness and perceived self-efficacy vary according to gender. The study was performed with 492 students attending high schools. The Life Satisfaction Scale, Cognitive Awareness Scale, Self-Efficacy Scale and an Individual Data Form were used for data collection. Pearson correlation coefficient results revealed that life satisfaction was significantly positively correlated with metacognitive awareness (r = .36, p < .001) and self-efficacy (r = .28, p < .001). Multiple regression analysis revealed that metacognitive awareness and self-efficacy accounted for 15 % of life satisfaction (F_(2,489) = 45.25, p < .001). Metacognitive awareness (ß = .29, p < .001) and self-efficacy (ß = .16, p < .001) make a significant original contribution to the model. In addition, the results show that adolescents do not vary according to life satisfaction (F = .10, p = .74, η²= .00), metacognitive awareness (F = .01, p = .91, η² = .00) or self-efficacy (F = 2.21, p = .13, η² = .00). The study results show that metacognitive awareness and self-efficacy are significant predictors of life satisfaction in adolescents.