A relational technique for estimating the age‐specific mortality pattern from grouped data

This paper presents a new technique of expanding an abridged life table. This technique is a non‐parametric one, which relates the probabilities of dying of the abridged table to those of a standard complete table. In order to evaluate the accuracy of the new technique we use it, as well as two other techniques, for expanding empirical abridged data sets. According to the results of our calculations the new method proves very efficient in producing complete life tables from grouped data, in many cases producing more accurate results than the other two methods in spite of its simplicity.     

A conceptualization and research strategy for the study of ecological aspects of the quality of life

The centerpiece of this paper is a proposed model identifying the various factors that ought to be brought into a thorough study of ecological aspects of quality of life. The model suggests that in addition to studying the physical, economic and social situation of an individual it also is important to study his beliefs about how the world works, his personal lifestyle, and his values, goals, aspirations and needs if one is to make adequate inferences about what produces the level of quality of life that he experiences. The model also shows that it is important to look at similar variables for a community or a society in order to arrive at inferences about quality of life for that community or society. Personal and societal learning is a dynamic factor in the model. The paper concludes with a discussion of strategies for operationalizing these factors in empirical studies.     

Sample Heterogeneity and the Measurement Structure of the Multidimensional Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale

Several measurement assumptions were examined with the goal of assessing the validity of the Multidimensional Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale (MSLSS), a measure of adolescents’ satisfaction with their family, friends, living environment, school, self, and general quality of life. The data were obtained via a cross-sectional survey of 8,225 adolescents in British Columbia, Canada. Confirmatory factor and factor mixture analyses of ordinal data were used to examine the measurement assumptions. The adolescents did not respond to all the MSLSS items in a psychometrically equivalent manner. A correlated five-factor model for an abridged version of the MSLSS resulted in good fit when all negatively worded items and several positively worded items (the least invariant) were excluded. The abridged 18-item version of the MSLSS provides a promising alternative for the measurement of five life domains that are pertinent to adolescents’ quality of life.     

Possibilities and Limitations for the Measurement of the Quality of Life in Urban Areas

Recently, quality of life has become a commonly used concept and is showing growing significance in economic and political terms. Additionally, quality of life issues have been recognized within the migration processes. In one view, quality of life relates to the degree to which the necessary conditions for satisfaction exists in a given society or region.It is argued that quality, as a measurable variable would refer to both the subject and the object of inquiry. In this sense, quality of life has two aspects, psychological and environmental ones. Nevertheless, this limitation constitutes a major problem since some researchers have totally neglected the perception of the people who live there, while another limitation is about the components, indices and indicators chosen in a certain analysis.In this paper, the aim is to test some measurement methods of the quality of life and to show the possibilities and limitations of a developing area in comparison to developed ones. In this way, some comparative analysis can be performed on the measurement methods of the quality of life levels with respect to regional variations.     

Measurement of socio-economic inequality using the Life-Quality Index

As income inequality presents a narrow view of overall inequality prevailing in a society, the paper focuses on its much broader definition, referred to as socio-economic inequality, which considers the disparities in income as well as in mortality, and standard of living. The paper presents a new method for measuring the socio-economic inequality using a composite social indicator, Life-Quality Index, derived from two principal indicators of development, namely, the Real Gross Domestic Product per person and the life expectancy at birth. Income inequality and the associated life expectancy variations are integrated into a quality adjusted income (QAI), to account for the observed differentials in life-quality of various quintiles of the population. The Gini coefficient of the distribution of QAI is introduced as a measure of socio-econmic inequality. The proposed approach is illustrated using data on life expectancy of five income quintiles in urban Canada. It is found that the magnitude of inequality in Canada is higher than that reflected by the traditional measure, the Gini coefficient of income.     

Rising Economic Prosperity and Social Quality the Case of New Member States of the European Union

This paper considers whether rising economic prosperity in the New Member States of the European Union since joining the EU is also reflected in better a quality of life and what constitutes a better quality of society for the citizens of these countries. The paper contributes to the debate about the relationship between economic conditions and subjective well-being by showing that the factors that contribute to the latter have not only changed with economic growth but that subjective life satisfaction has also improved. Here we consider how this relationship can be explained by using the Social Quality model to measure the quality of society. We look specifically at the New Member States of the European Union (Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria) using the European Quality of Life Surveys for 2003 and 2007. This covers a period during which the economic conditions of these societies improved and they modernised. The social quality model explains a great deal of the variance in life satisfaction and helps us to show that as well as economic factors, other aspects of the quality of society, such as social integration and empowerment, are also important. We argue that economic and social factors have to be understood as interacting with other aspects of society if we seek to understand the quality of society.     

Life Potential as a Basic Demographic Indicator

This paper proposes an indicator that integrates life expectancy with the demographic structure of the population for a given society. By doing this, we have a simple indicator of mortality and aging combined, which could be very useful for developed societies. As is widely known, life expectancy at birth is independent of the demographic structure of the population, and therefore is adequate for measuring overall mortality. However, it neglects to take into account the fact that as life expectancy increases society ages, and so looking at life expectancy alone can produce an overly optimistic view of the development process, especially if we pay attention to future sustainability. Aging can in fact affect quality of life and sustainability in the long run. The indicators for aging are usually very crude, such as providing information on the share of the population who are 65 and over. We propose a simple indicator that integrates life expectancy at different ages, not only at birth, with the demographic structure of the population at a given point in time. The indicator has an intuitive interpretation in terms of the life potential, or biological capital, of society; and given that it is a weighted average, its changes can be easily decomposed into reductions in mortality (gains in life expectancy) and aging for different age intervals.     

大城市候鸟式老人生活状况研究——以广州市为例

随着人口老龄化的发展,城市老年人的生活质量越来越受到社会的关注。而持续快速的城市化进程则催生了一个日益增多的特殊老年人群体：候鸟式老人。他们频繁地往返于原居住地与城市之间,其生活特点、需求与本地老年人有较大差异。本文选择了广州市外来移民较集中的穗园小区和中山大学小区为研究案饲．调查候鸟式老人在社区中的休闲生活状况,分析他们在原居住地和广州居住小区之间的活动差异,总结了城市候鸟式老人的特点。由此提出从城市、社区、家庭三个层面来改善城市候鸟式老人的生活状况。     

Discretionary Time of Chinese College Students: Activities and Impact of SARS-Induced Constraints on Choices

How people make choices about activity engagement during discretionary time is a topic of increasing interest to those studying quality of life issues. Assuming choices are made to maximize individual welfare, several factors are believed to influence these choices. Constraints theory from the leisure research literature suggests these choices are heavily influenced by intrapersonal, interpersonal and structural constraints. Within these constraints, the individual is motivated to make choices that maximize perceived personal welfare. Leisure affordance theory focuses on these motivations by suggesting the importance of more positive influences on choices within a set of constraints. In this study, an inventory of discretionary time activities and reasons for choosing these activities were documented for a sample of Chinese college students. Because data were collected during an unanticipated SARS epidemic, the impact of the SARS crisis on students’ daily choices was also examined in detail. Despite the constraints imposed by SARS and the attendant suspension of off-campus activities, some students did not perceive a change of daily life as a result, while others perceived positive changes in attitudes and behavior. Findings shed light on students’ experiences during a time of rapid change in Chinese society and higher education. Decisions made during this influential time of life are important because they may affect students’ future choices related to leisure and discretionary time.     

Quality of life and city size: An exploratory study of Nigeria

This paper examines the variations in the quality of life at the relatively neglected inter-urban scale in a developing nation. Based on a sample survey of 3800 heads of households in Nigerian cities ranked into three categories: large, medium and small, the study found that level-of-living is related to city size, with the residents of large cities having a higher quality of life than those in the medium and small cities.     

Does rapid economic growth improve the human lot? Some empirical evidence

Politicians and decision-makers in both developed and developing countries have sought to maximize economic growth on the basis of the belief that this leads to advances in the quality of life. This paper seeks to test whether this belief is well-founded. An application of the Diffusion Index to time-series data collected from a rapidly growing, low income country demonstrates that while higher national income makes for greater welfare the rate of welfare enhancement is almost independent of the rate of national income growth. On the basis of these findings, it is argued that the Gross National Product by itself may not be used as a reliable measure of human welfare. Finally, this paper suggests that in order to provide the maximum quality of life for the members of a given society, its national policy should be based on a much broader conception of welfare than is currently implied by the idea of GNP growthmanship.     

Linguistic indicators

The quality of life of a society can be considered a function of its complexity which in turn can be indicated by the complexity of its language. Moreover, it is well known that a characterization of a language or of a particular author can be measured statistically. With this in view, this paper surveys and compares a class of linguistic indicators which characterizes languages and authors, presents a uniform review of Zipf's law including extensions and explanations, and presents a new rank-frequency approach which is useful as a linguistic indicator.     

The level of civilisation a new field for the application of social indicators

Social indicators have been recognised for some time as a means of measuring various facets of social life which were difficult to quantify, such as level of living, environment conditions and the quality of life. It is proposed here that they should also be applied to the most important of them all, and namely to the quality of the society itself. Quality of society is the outcome of society's development, it may be seen as a level of civilisation, i.e. a position on a scale between vile barbarism and highest civilisation. This position may be given a numerical expression in terms of social indicators. A suggestion for constructing such a system of indicators is presented in this paper.     

从生活质量指标看澳门和谐社会构建的难度与方案

和谐社会理念体现了国家发展的价值取向和对发展的深刻认识。本文从我们设计构想的澳门客观生活质量指标体系框架出发,探讨了影响当前澳门地区和谐社会构建的若干关键因素,最后提出了有针对性的治理措施,以有效促进澳门社会的更加和谐和稳定。     

体现科学发展观的生活质量指标体系：基于澳门的考察

科学发展观是指导发展的科学理论,其核心是提高人民的生活质量。本文以科学发展观为指导,从宏观层面构建了澳门居民客观生活质量指标体系。该体系涵盖了经济、社会、环境三大系统,包括物质福利、教育、健康等11个与生活质量直接相关的领域,反映了澳门经济、社会、环境的整体发展面貌和居民生活质量状况,体现了全面、协调、可持续发展的科学发展观内涵。     

Alternative technology and quality of life: An exploratory survey of British Columbia smallholders

During the last decade there has occurred a significant demographic shift in North American society as rural areas become repopulated by urban-to-rural migration. Part of this migratory flow is the smallholding movement, families and individuals practicing near subsistence agriculture on small parcels of land. Central to the ideology of smallholding are the notions of simple living and technological self-reliance through the use of alternative technology (solar water heaters, windmills, greenhouses, etc.). In order to gain insight into the actual practice of smallholding, interviews with a small population of smallholders in southeastern British Columbia and southern Alberta were conducted. The data from the interviews are presented in terms of the correlations of a selected number of quality of life indicators with technical skill, technological use, attitudinal and demographic/structural factors. In general, commitment to the ideals of the smallholding movement were found to be positively correlated with quality of life and use of alternative technology, indicating that the smallholders may be a group where ideological commitment has a more consistent positive correlation with behavior and sentiments than have structural or material factors.     

Multidimensional Poverty in Paraguay: Trends from 2000 to 2015

The paper discusses Kenneth C. Land and Alex C. Michalos’ review and assessment of the evolution of research on social indicators, quality of life and well-being over the past fifty years. The contribution deals with the impacts of three major societal changes on the future research agenda of social indicators research: firstly, impacts of the changing class structure of post-industrial society, secondly, globalization impacts, including its economic, political, cultural and institutional dimensions, and thirdly, the impacts of an increasingly networked digitalization of production and consumption.     

我国人民生活质量的实证分析

虽然生活质量在过去的十年里,在大多数国家里已经得到了很大的提高,但确并没有引起我们的足够重视。生活质量在健康和医疗行为上都是一个基本的指示器,所以对生活质量的研究显得非常重要,特别是计算出有关我国各省自治区人民的生活质量综合得分,再通过它去评估我国人民的生活质量和解决与生活质量有关的问题。在这篇文章中我们运用了因子分析的方法进行研究,从而建立分析模型。     

Pie-eyed Optimists: Baby-boomers the Optimistic Generation?

Social indicators research is concerned with the measurement of quality of life in society from both the objective and subjective point of view. The subjective appraisal of quality of life often involves judgements in terms of satisfaction (Veenhoven, 1996: 1). Such research however, is not only concerned with satisfaction but also with dissatisfaction. The concepts of pessimism and optimism are used in this paper to determine feelings of satisfaction and dissatisfaction among an elite cohort of baby boom Australians. Objective and subjective potential indicators of quality of life are combined to explore these dimensions.     

The notion of population economics

Economic literature has not adequately addressed population problems and growth models have assumed the population growth rate as an exogenous constant. Life expectancy and the quality of documentation over a long period have corrected the problem of nonstationary population, however. In addition, mathematical and computational possibilities have been increased thereby allowing population issues to be considered endogenous and variable in models. Recognizing that population changes affect supply and demand and should be studied, a group of economists have found a society to address such population problems--the European Society for Population Economics. Within the realm of population economics are subfields that should be included in any studies. For example, economists must examine household behavior and its influence on having or not having children. Another subfield includes studying the effects of changes in birth rates. For example, birth rates affect age distribution and each age distribution has a typical distribution of demand. A young society would demand schooling and child care, while an old society would need elderly care and health facilities. To enhance optimum population growth, policy makers have several options. For example, family allowances and child care influence procreation, but they require an increase in state expenditures and taxes. Providing health care for all members of society improves the quality of the population and its size. Implementing a migration policy also increases the population. Education and retraining strengthens the quality of the labor force, but some argue that it does not lead to procreation.