MEASURING QUALITY OF LIFE IN INFORMAL SETTLEMENTS IN SOUTH AFRICA

South African cities attract thousands of new residents every year in search of work and a better life. The housing backlog coupled with a shortage of housing subsidies means that for many South Africans there is no alternative but to live in informal housing and shack settlements. Informal settlements are therefore here to stay for the next decade and beyond. Given the importance of these residential areas, research needs to be undertaken to determine how to improve the lives of people living in shack settlements. This theme has received little dedicated attention by South African quality of life researchers in the past and the paper begins to address this by exploring the quality of life of informal dwellers in three distinct city areas in South Africa: Buffalo City, Durban, and Alexandra, Johannesburg. The paper investigates the factors that are most important in improving the quality of life of residents in informal housing as well as the main obstacles to a better quality of life. It uses regression analysis to obtain an understanding of the kinds of issues which shape quality of life in these areas and concludes by suggesting several research directions which would improve our knowledge of quality of life for informal settlement residents.     

MEASURING QUALITY OF LIFE: ECONOMIC,SOCIAL, AND SUBJECTIVE INDICATORS

Thinkers have discussed the “good life” and the desirable society for millennia. In the last decades, scientists offered several alternative approaches to defining and measuring quality of life: social indicators such as health and levels of crime, subjective well-being measures (assessing people's evaluative reactions to their lives and societies), and economic indices. These alternative indicators assess three philosophical approaches to well-being that are based, respectively, on normative ideals, subjective experiences, and the ability to select goods and services that one desires. The strengths and weaknesses of the various approaches are reviewed. It is argued that social indicators and subjective well-being measures are necessary to evaluate a society, and add substantially to the regnant economic indicators that are now favored by policy makers. Each approach to measuring the quality of life contains information that is not contained in the other measures.     

INDICATORS OF HUMAN WELL BEING: FINE-TUNING VS. TAKING ACTION?

Social Indicators Research - Are more social indicators the solution to growing impoverishment? Can – or should – human adaptability create a sense of well being among even the most...     

COMBINING SOCIAL,ECONOMIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL INDICATORS TO MEASURE SUSTAINABLE HUMAN WELL-BEING

In this paper an attempt is made to illustrate some ways in which social, economic and environmental indicators can be combined to tell a coherent story about the sustainability of human well-being. Using examples from the fields of health, the fishing industry and energy, it is argued that one's success at constructing a single comprehensive system of indicators of human well-being will always be limited by one's particular point of departure from social, economic or environmental indicators. If that is indeed the case, then it would be helpful for researchers to abandon attempts to construct single comprehensive utopian systems in favour of agreed upon lists of important goals, indicators and monitoring procedures that can be used to implement progressive social change.