Poverty Lines Based on Fuzzy Sets Theory and its Application to Malaysian Data

Defining the poverty line has been acknowledged as being highly variable by the majority of published literature. Despite long discussions and successes, poverty line has a number of problems due to its arbitrary nature. This paper proposes three measurements of poverty lines using membership functions based on fuzzy set theory. The three membership functions, namely exponential, trapezoidal and quadratic sigmoid together with their calculation steps are discussed. Average monthly household incomes of Malaysians are used to illustrate the proposed poverty line. Three new sets of poverty lines were derived for 3 years as numerical application to the proposed membership functions. The numerical results show the flexibility of poverty lines resulted from the composition of the proposed functions. It suggests that the official poverty line for Malaysians is too low thus creating an underestimation of the extent of poverty in Malaysia.     

Spiritual Needs and Quality of Life in Estonia

This paper reports on three field studies using the WHOQOL-100 and WHOQOL-BREF instruments that utilized three different samples (N = 1,801) to get a better understanding of how important the person’s spiritual needs are for quality of life. The most striking negative difference between the Estonian and World Health Organization samples was in the WHOQOL-100 spirituality domain. We found that the quality of life index significantly correlated with the WHOQOL-100 spirituality score. Also, spirituality was related to all quality of life domains (physical health, psychological well-being, level of independence, social relationships and environment). Regarding psychological well-being, spirituality correlated with self-esteem, positive feelings, and thinking, learning, memory, and concentration, on the other. Our findings suggest that spirituality occupies an important place in the person’s perception of their quality of life in a changing socio–economic environment as the one in Estonia.     

Multidimensional Quality of Life: A New Measure of Quality of Life in Adults

This paper presents a new measure for assessing quality of life (QOL) –the Multidimensional Quality of Life (MQOL)– and describes its derivation, characteristics, structure and several applications. Reasons for developing the MQOL include the restricted range of assessed domains and the heavy emphasis on health in many standard assessment tools. The MQOL was derived by meaning probes into QOL in different samples. It is a 60-item self-report tool of high reliability and validity covering various themes and forming, in line with factor and cluster analyses, 17 scales that constitute five factors according to confirmatory factor analysis. It has been applied with thousands of individuals, in English, Hebrew, Russian and Arabic, and is adequate for healthy and physically or mentally sick individuals, under regular or challenging circumstances. Described studies present findings in samples of sick or healthy individuals (e.g., unemployed, members of a collapsing Kibbutz); relations between the MQOL and coping strategies in partners of sick individuals; and interrelations of overall and scale scores in new and old immigrants. Conclusions focus on the structure of the MQOL, the specificity of coping effects, and the stabilizing mechanisms of QOL.     

浙江城市居民生活质量的区域差异：一项基于客观指标的聚类分析

生活质量是城市价值的核心,是一个多层面的复合概念。本文在宏观层次上综合出一套以客观指标构成的生活质量综合评价指标体系。从经济生活、社会保障、教育文化、生命健康、生活环境和交通通讯六个层面来衡量浙江省11个城市的居民生活质量状况．并运用聚类分析、方差分析等技术对各个城市生活质量的区域差异进行了比较研究．最后对如何提高城市居民的生活质量提出了一些建议。     

A New Measure of Quality of Work Life (QWL) Based on Need Satisfaction and Spillover Theories

A new measure of QWL was developed based on need satisfaction and spillover theories. The measure was designed to capture the extent to which the work environment, job requirements, supervisory behavior, and ancillary programs in an organization are perceived to meet the needs of an employee. We identified seven major needs, each having several dimensions. These are: (a) health and safety needs (protection from ill health and injury at work and outside of work, and enhancement of good health), (b) economic and family needs (pay, job security, and other family needs), (c) social needs (collegiality at work and leisure time off work), (d) esteem needs (recognition and appreciation of work within the organization and outside the organization), (e) actualization needs (realization of one's potential within the organization and as a professional), (f) knowledge needs (learning to enhance job and professional skills), and (g) aesthetic needs (creativity at work as well as personal creativity and general aesthetics). The measure's convergent and discriminant validities were tested and the data provided support to the construct validity of the QWL measure. Furthermore, the measure's nomological (predictive) validity was tested through hypotheses deduced from spillover theory. Three studies were conducted – two studies using university employees and the third using accounting firms. The results from the pooled sample provided support for the hypotheses and thus lent some support to the nomological validity to the new measure.     

Quality of Life in Hong Kong: the Cuhk Hong Kong Quality of Life Index

The CUHK Hong Kong Quality of Life Index, which aims to assess and monitor the quality of life in Hong Kong, is a composite index incorporating both objective and subjective measures. This index, developed by the Faculty of Social Science of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, employs data collected in representative sample surveys and official statistics. A wide range of life domains is covered and the year 2002 is taken as the base year of the study. Index scores demonstrate that in general the quality of life in Hong Kong has improved slightly in 2003; scores of the composite index and the three sub-indices on sectorial performance are somewhat higher than those of the previous year. It is noteworthy that Hong Kong has made noticeable progress and performs as well as many economically advanced societies in certain life domains; yet, the well-being of the people relies on further improvement in others.     

Quality of Life in Hong Kong: the Cuhk Hong Kong Quality of Life Index

The CUHK Hong Kong Quality of Life Index, which aims to assess and monitor the quality of life in Hong Kong, is a composite index incorporating both objective and subjective measures. This index, developed by the Faculty of Social Science of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, employs data collected in representative sample surveys and official statistics. A wide range of life domains is covered and the year 2002 is taken as the base year of the study. Index scores demonstrate that in general the quality of life in Hong Kong has improved slightly in 2003; scores of the composite index and the three sub-indices on sectorial performance are somewhat higher than those of the previous year. It is noteworthy that Hong Kong has made noticeable progress and performs as well as many economically advanced societies in certain life domains; yet, the well-being of the people relies on further improvement in others.     

Identifying the Quality of Work by Fuzzy Sets Theory: A Comparison Between Disabled and Non-disabled Workers

The paper assesses the quality of work of people with and without disabilities in Italy using the ISFOL PLUS (Participation, Labour, Unemployment, Survey 2010 Questionnaire, where the data refer to 2009. In particular, we develop a multidimensional indicator of quality of work within the fuzzy set theory. The results of the investigation show a different mechanism of determinants of quality of work for disabled and non-disabled people: while for these last ones seniority seem to highly contribute to the score of quality of work, institutional factors, like Law 68/99, whose aim is the regulation and promotion of the employment of persons with disabilities, appear to play a bigger role in the determination of the score for quality of work for disabled people. For medium and high levels of score of quality of work, education appears to play a similar role for disabled and non-disabled people, as the incidence of people with high quality jobs corresponds to people with a high level of education. However, for disabled people who are in low quality jobs the level of education appears to be irrelevant. Substantial differences emerge with respect to gender among disabled people, where women appear to be in higher quality of work scores than men; no substantial difference between genders emerges for non-disabled people.     

A Note on Student Quality of Life

An aggregated sample of students (n = 3407) from the University of Northern British Columbia covering 7 of the 8 years from 1998 to 2005 is analyzed to show the relative and combined explanatory power of some life domain (e.g., satisfaction with family relations) and university-related variables (e.g., satisfaction with UNBC instructors) on some global quality-of-life variables (e.g., life satisfaction). It was found that, in combination with the life domain variables, the university-related variables added practically nothing to our explanatory power. The most powerful university-related variable was students’ satisfaction with their instructors.     

Health Care Service Needs and Correlates of Quality of Life: A Case Study of Elderly Chinese Immigrants in Canada

This study explored the health care service needs and the major correlates of quality of life among 127 community-dwelling elderly Chinese immigrants in a western Canadian city. Participants were interviewed in their homes by trained, bilingual interviewers employing a structured questionnaire that covered a wide range of topics including health care service needs, living arrangements, health status, social network, life satisfaction, and socio-demographic information. Results demonstrated that ethnic nursing homes, senior centres that provide programs and services, and homemaker services were respondents’ major service needs. Multiple ordinary least-squares regression analysis revealed that respondents who emigrated from Mainland China and those who exhibited greater psychological well-being, reported being physically more mobile, perceived fewer service needs, and expressed satisfaction with the quality of their neighbourhood demonstrated higher levels of life satisfaction.     

Objective Inequality Indexes Joining Income with Life Expectancy Through the Life Quality Index of Sub-populations

Social Indicators Research - Two indexes are developed to compare inequality: one within, the other between countries. The indexes are objective, more transparent and comprehensive. They integrate...     

Estimating Quality of Life and Place with Location Theory: The McBucks Index

This paper explores the changes in inequality and welfare between EU regions at the NUTS 3 level over the 2003–2011 period. Changes in absolute and relative inequalities are broken down into components explaining the effects of population change, re-ranking of regions and income growth between regional per capita incomes. Each component of inequality change is further decomposed by subgroup, revealing the contributions arising from changes within subgroups and from changes between subgroups. The decomposition of the change in absolute inequality is used to develop a decomposition of the change in welfare between EU regions.     

Basic Minimum Needs,Quality of Life and Selected Correlates: Explorations in Villages in Northern India

For those involved in international development, one of the major goals is an improvement in the quality of life of the poor. Bhargava and Chakrabati (1992: 133) see the “primary objective of development at any given time is to improve the quality of life”. Indeed, the mission statement for an international development organization explicitly commits itself to the improvement of the quality of life for the “poorest of the poor” (DID, 1994). Social indicators, as “transeconomic” measures of quality of life, have “become an integral part of 'development indicators”' (Kao and Liu, 1984: 400; see, also Kahn, 1991). The connection between quality of life and development extends beyond the Third World. For example, in the U.S. Myers (1987) found quality of life influenced inmigration to Austin, Texas, thus affecting its economic development. Undoubtedly the majority of the connections between social indicators and development has been examined at the macro, or national levels using economic, health, education and other objective, comparative indices. Recognizing that such measures as GNP are oftentimes inadequate, assorted indices have been derived to gauge the changes in social development over time, e.g., the well-known Physical Quality of Life Index (PQLI) constructed by the Overseas Development Council (Morris, 1976). Many of these tend to focus on objective, material indicators (commodity possessions) as opposed to the more subjective ones (Anand and Ravallion, 1993). It is not the purpose of this paper to examine the various critics' arguments about the strengths and weaknesses of extant macro versus micro indices, but rather to lend support for the general need to assess development and social change through social indicators, whether macro or micro, objective or subjective. Ultimately, the purpose of the assessment should guide which social indicators are selected. The purpose of this paper is to examine several issues arising from the linkages between development efforts and quality of life (QOL). Using empirical data which were gathered to evaluate a community development project in the Garhwal region of Northern India, several issues, germane to both social indicators and development, will be investigated. These include: (1) the relationship between “Basic Minimum Needs” (BMNs) and QOL, (2) some methodological innovations for measuring both BMNs and QOL, and (3) selected correlates of BMNs and social indicators of QOL for Garhwali villagers. Before describing the project and its findings, we will first place it in the overall development context.     

Multidimensional Wellbeing: An Index of Quality of Life in a Developing Economy

Human wellbeing indices can shed light on a society’s quality of life. This study ranks human wellbeing by employing objective and subjective indicators of quality of life for hundred districts of Pakistan. Households level data used for the analysis includes ‘The Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement Survey’ for the year 2006–2007. The human wellbeing is examined in four domains: education, health, living conditions and economic situation. Principal component analysis is employed for indexing human wellbeing, rated in five quintiles are generated. The paper demonstrates the importance of education, health and living condition domains in determining the human wellbeing. Objective indicators of education i.e., adult literacy rate, net primary enrolment and gender equality in education are important variables in ranking of districts. Economic status of the households and communities are important variables in subjective perception of wellbeing. The results indicate substantial variation in human wellbeing among districts of Pakistan It may be considered that disparity in objective condition and in subjective perceptions are adequately depicting wellbeing differences. Finally, it is argued that objective indicators and subjective wellbeing measures are needed in unison to understand human quality of life and to make informed policy decisions.     

Results of a Quality of Work Life Index in Spain. A Comparison of Survey Results and Aggregate Social Indicators

The European Union launched the Lisbon Strategy in 2000 with the aim of establishing itself as the world’s most powerful economy. The importance of job quality has returned to the top of the European employment and social policy agenda. As targets are set, significant progress has been made in the creation of indicators. In this study, we compute a composite index for quality of work life using the dimensional structure provided by the European Commission, and present our results for regions, sectors, professional categories and sizes of firm in Spain in the period 2001–2004. We find that better results are found in the more developed regions, in service sectors, in bigger firms and in jobs with more responsibility. Finally, we compare the results of the index with workers’ subjective perceptions of job satisfaction, measured by a quality of work life survey. The test results reveal a strong relationship between the two measurements.     

基于因子分析法对居民生活质量的度量与评价

随着经济的发展,人们的物质生活基本得到满足,在能够保持基本生活的前提下,更加关注精神方面的需求。社会发展的最终目标是人的全面发展,因此,我们应该更加关注居民生活质量的提高。本文利用因子分析法对居民生活质量的高低进行度量,找出居民生活质量综合得分排名前五的城市进行逐一分析,提出建议。     

A Fuzzy Index and Severity Scale to Measure Violence Against Women

Social Indicators Research - Measuring and comparing levels of violence against women across individuals or countries are controversial exercises, and yet they remain essential to understanding the...     

A Hierarchical Ordinal Probit Model for the Analysis of Life Satisfaction in Italy

The aim of this paper is to study the individual and contextual determinants of life satisfaction in Italy. A hierarchical probit model is proposed for studying data with group structure and an ordinal response variable. The group structure is defined by the presence of micro observations embedded with regional contexts (macro observations), and the specification is at both of these levels. The methodology is applied to Eurobarometer survey data, with individuals viewed as micro observations and regions as macro observations. We find that Italy is not an homogeneous country with respect to life satisfaction, and that the regional environment contributes with the observed and unobserved characteristics of the individuals to life satisfaction level.     

Subjective Quality of Life in Zhuhai City,South China: A Public Survey Using the International Wellbeing Index

The study of subjective quality of life and its connotations in the People’s Republic of China is at a preliminary stage. Although there is an emerging body of literature on this topic, there are few datasets representative of the general public, particularly in Mainland China. This paper reports the findings of a public survey (N = 449) conducted in Zhuhai City, South China using the International Wellbeing Index (IWI). There were four main aims: (1) to judge whether residents were satisfied with their lives; (2) to compare the data with recent findings from Hong Kong and Macau; (3) to investigate the equivalence of the IWI in terms of its psychometric properties; and (4) to determine the applicability of the ‘Theory of Homeostasis Wellbeing’. The data indicated a moderate level of personal (PWI score = 64.4.) and national (NWI score = 57.4) wellbeing, consistent with recent findings from Hong Kong and Macau. The PWI score was within the normative range for non-Western countries, which indicates that the residents were, on the whole, satisfied with their lives. Although previously reported objective measures of quality of life in Zhuhai are lower than in Hong Kong and Macau, this is not reflected in this study’s subjective measures. This finding was interpreted in terms of the ‘Theory of Subjective Wellbeing Homeostasis’, and the specific situation in Zhuhai, as there seems to be an absence of factors (i.e., no harsh economic or social situation) which could drive subjective wellbeing below normal. Last, that the IWI demonstrated good psychometric performance in terms of its reliability, validity, and sensitivity, and concurred with previous published reports, it seems that the scale’s robustness generalises to Chinese samples.