The Non-Economic Quality of Life on a Sub-National Level in South Africa

Most research on the non-economic quality of life have been (a) on a national level or performed on cross-country comparisons, and/or (b) used subjective indicators to measure how people perceive their non-economic quality of life. In this paper, our main contribution is to construct objective indicators of the non-economic quality of life for 354 sub-national magisterial districts in South Africa. We also compare changes in these indicators over time, and consider methodological issues in the construction of objective indicators of non-economic quality of life. We find that although income does matter for the overall quality of life, non-income components of the quality of life can make an important difference. We find a number of places with low incomes that have been able to achieve higher than expected outcomes in terms of the non-economic quality of life, and that some of the relative income poor areas have improved their non-economic ranking between 1996 and 2004. We also find that the geographical/environmental quality of life in South Africa is better in non-urban areas, where fewer of the country’s population is residing. Significant improvements in the overall quality of life may be achieved through improvements in the urban natural environment.

Socioeconomic Indicators for Analyzing Convergence: The Case of Greece: 1960–2004

The purpose of this paper is to use socioeconomic indicators for analyzing convergence within Greece at regional (NUTS II) and prefecture levels (NUTS III) since 1960. We use two alternative approaches. The first one is based on the coefficient of variation and the second one on quality of life rankings. We confirm the decline of regional inequalities in Greece, with the exclusion of the 1980s. Regions with increased tourist and trade activity are also regions with high quality of life. Border regions are usually the laggards of social and economic development.

Sustainable Housing in the Urban Context: International Sustainable Development Indicator Sets and Housing

Housing, an essential aspect of quality of life, is also significant for sustainable development (SD). All of the major international statements on SD refer to housing or settlement strategies. However, indicator sets derived from these statements often fail to include good indicators of sustainable housing. This article outlines the conceptualisation of SD and housing from the international statements. It proceeds by describing the international indicator sets which have been constructed based on these policy statements. International organisations such as the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (UNCSD), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the European Union (EU) have all produced indicator sets. However, this article contends that housing is an underdeveloped indicator and calls for more attention to be paid to the importance of aspects of housing for SD and the measurement of progress towards it via social indicators.

Person, Perception, and Place: What Matters to Health and Quality of Life

Interest in understanding how characteristics associated with where people live, in addition to the characteristics of the people themselves, affect health outcomes has risen sharply in recent years. While much of the research examining this question focus on teasing apart effects of place and individual on outcomes, less attention has been paid to examining how individuals’ perceptions of where they live may provide some clues to better understanding the influence of place on outcomes. We present findings from analysis undertaken that incorporate the subjective responses of individuals, residing in three socially contrasting neighbourhoods, to their local environment. Our first question addressed whether perceptions related to neighbourhood and city of residence matter to self rated health and quality of life independent of individual characteristics, while the second question examined whether the perceptions and individual characteristics are modified by the neighbourhood socio-economic context. Our results show that perceived neighbourhood characteristics, in addition to individual sociodemographic factors, are significant correlates of self rated health and quality of life. Moreover, we show that the type of perceived neighbourhood characteristics and the magnitude of their influence on self rated health and quality of life vary depending on whether they live in high- versus low-socioeconomic status neighbourhoods.

Education,Human Development and Quality of Life: Measurement Issues and Implications for India

This paper analyses and compares the measurement of indicators and variables in the construction of education index in Human Development Index (HDI) at the global, national and 18 sub-national human development reports in India since 1990. The results show non-comparability of measurement of the education indicators and variables. This implies that vertical and horizontal comparability of HDI may not be plausible for India. Implications of these analyses are highlighted for measurement of quality of life indices with special reference to physical quality of life index. Policy lessons are derived for future measurement of education index for India in particular, and other developing countries in general.

Cross-National Variation in Individual Life Satisfaction: Effects of National Wealth, Human Development, and Environmental Conditions

This study adds to the literature on subjective well-being and life satisfaction by exploring variation in individual life satisfaction across countries. Understanding whether and how individual life satisfaction varies across countries is important because if the goal of development is to increase well-being, we must identify the causes of well-being in different national and regional contexts. Using hierarchical linear modeling techniques, I test the hypothesis that individual well-being does vary across countries, and that national wealth, human development and environmental conditions explain this variation. I also test whether the effects of individual characteristics on life satisfaction (including age, marital status, education, income, employment status, and sex) vary across countries, and which country level characteristics explain these variations. Using individual level data from the World Values Survey, I find that there is significant variation in life satisfaction across countries. There is also significant variation in the slopes of individual predictors of life satisfaction across countries and regions. Regional differences in the effects of individual characteristics on life satisfaction explain most of the between country variation in life satisfaction. This indicates that universal development indicators may not adequately reflect differences in life satisfaction across countries, and that development measurements should better reflect regional differences.

Measuring Youth Development: A Nonparametric Cross-Country ‘Youth Welfare Index’

This paper develops an empirical methodology for the construction of a synthetic multi-dimensional cross-country comparison of the performance of governments around the world in improving the livelihood of their younger population. The devised ‘Youth Welfare Index’ is based on the nonparametric Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) methodology and allows for cross-country benchmarking and comparison over time. The value added of the youth index is to produce country-specific rankings and trace performance evolution with respect to indicators solely centered on youth, unlike other development indicators like the Human Development Index (HDI) which bundles many social and development indicators.

Measuring Changes in Family Wellbeing in New Zealand 1981–2001

Since the mid-1980s, New Zealand has experienced extensive economic, social and political reforms. The economic impact of these changes has been closely monitored and much commented upon. However, the social impacts of the reforms on different family types are less well understood. This paper outlines a project designed to monitor how the reforms impacted upon specific family types via the use of indicators of family wellbeing constructed from census data. These indicators show that for a range of family types, the reforms of the 1980s and 1990s varied in their impact, with single-parent families faring worst.

The inter-temporal aspect of well-being and societal progress

The perceptions on well-being and societal progress are influenced also by the quantitative indicators and measures used in the measurement, presentation and semantics of discussing these issues. The article presents a novel generic statistical measure S-time-distance, with clear interpretability that delivers a broader concept to look at data, to understand and compare situations. This methodology can provide a new insight to many problems, an additional statistical measure, and a presentation tool for policy analysis and debate expressed in time units, readily understood by policy makers, media and general public. The benefits of this new view in comparisons, competitiveness issues, benchmarking, target setting and monitoring for economic, employment, social, R&D and environment indicators at the world, OECD, EU, country, regional, city, sector, socio-economic groups, company, project, household and individual levels could be immediately applied to a wide variety of substantive fields at macro and micro levels using existing data and indicator systems from international, national, state, city and local sources. These suggestions are illustrated by comparisons between EU15 and USA.

The Quality of Life in Japan

This study is part of a collaborative project examining the quality of life in Confucian societies in Asia. Our major findings suggest that, when our sixteen specific life domains are grouped into three life spheres, namely, material, post-material, and public, the Japanese people tend to be most satisfied with the post-material sphere of life and least satisfied with the public sphere of life such as the condition of environment and welfare system. In searching the direct, independent effects of demographics, lifestyles, value priorities, and domain assessments on the quality of life, none of the public life domain assessments shows a significant impact on the quality of life, while friendships and spiritual life in the post-material sphere of life are an important determinant. Equally notable is the finding that neither educational attainment nor household income contributes significantly to the experience of subjective well-being. Leading a global lifestyle also affects positively the quality of life. Finally, being married and satisfaction with marital life appear to be powerful and prevalent influence on the quality of life in Japan.

Measuring Well-being Across Europe: Description of the ESS Well-being Module and Preliminary Findings

It has become customary to judge the success of a society through the use of objective indicators, predominantly economic and social ones. Yet in most developed nations, increases in income, education and health have arguably not produced comparable increases in happiness or life satisfaction. While much has been learned from the introduction of subjective measures of global happiness or life satisfaction into surveys, significant recent progress in the development of high-quality subjective measures of personal and social well-being has not been fully exploited. This article describes the development of a set of well-being indicators which were included in Round 3 of the European Social Survey. This Well-being Module seeks to evaluate the success of European countries in promoting the personal and social well-being of their citizens. In addition to providing a better understanding of domain-specific measures, such as those relating to family, work and income, the design of the Well-being Module recognises that advancement in the field requires us to look beyond measures which focus on how people feel (happiness, pleasure, satisfaction) to measures which are more concerned with how well they function. This also shifts the emphasis from relatively transient states of well-being to measures of more sustainable well-being. The ESS Well-being Module represents one of the first systematic attempts to create a set of policy-relevant national well-being accounts.

The Quality of Life in South Korea

The AsiaBarometer survey of 1,023 respondents shows Life in Korea is highly modernized and digitalized without being much globalized. Despite the modernization and digitalization of their lifestyles, ordinary citizens still prioritize materialistic values more than post-materialistic values, and they remain least satisfied in the material life sphere. A multivariate analysis of the Korean survey reveals that their positive assessments of their standard of living and marriage are the most powerful influences on the quality of life they experience. Remarkable improvements in the objective conditions of life for the past three decades have failed to transform Korea into a nation of well-being.

Why Faster,Higher, Stronger isn’t Necessarily Better—The Relations of Paralympian and Women’s Soccer Teams’ Performance to National Well-being

The present study considers how the athletic performance of minority groups relates to national subjective well-being (SWB) and life expectancy. Based on the argument that sports represent a microcosm of society and the reliable finding that national inequality is associated with reduced SWB, we hypothesized that greater opportunities for typically disadvantaged groups within sports should be positively related to national indicators of well-being. Study 1 compared the relation of success in the Paralympics versus the Olympics to national subjective well-being and life expectancy. The results supported our hypothesis. In Study 2 we conceptually replicated these results using the standings of national men’s and women’s soccer teams. Overall, it appears that the opportunities to compete in sports that nations afford to members of disadvantaged groups reflect on the health and well-being of the entire society.

Subjective Well-being Among Young People in Transition to Adulthood

This study used a nationally representative sample of young people in Germany from the German Socio-Economic Panel to examine how demographic and socio-economic characteristics of the young persons and their parents, personality traits of the young persons, quality and quantity of relationships, the parent's level of life satisfaction, and other measures of satisfaction for the young person are related to the initial assessment of life satisfaction by the individual at the critical point of transition from adolescence to adulthood. The results indicated that consistency existed across different domains of satisfaction, specifically satisfaction with life and satisfaction with grades. A strong pattern of association was also observed between the subjective well-being of the adolescents and variables that measured different dimensions of the quality and quantity of interpersonal relationships, including relationships with parents.

An Index of the Condition of Children: The Ideal and a Less-than-Ideal U.S. Example

This paper uses recent data on U.S. children from the National Survey of America’s Families (NSAF) to create indices that tally the number of problems or risks that individual children experience. We compare results with those from indices developed elsewhere that assess the change across sets of population-level indicators. While the two types of indices show similar trends over time, specific changes, as well as trends, depend on the specific domain of well-being or context examined, highlighting the importance of the distinction between well-being and context. Children with problems in multiple domains tend to be socio-economically and demographically disadvantaged compared with other children. We preface this work by providing an overview of the history of child well-being indicators and distinguish indices of child well-being from indices of the condition of children.

The Quality of Life in Hong Kong

The AsiaBarometer of 1,000 respondents shows that Hong Kong people have a great desire for materialistic attainment, and such an emphasis on materialism bodes ill for their quality of life. Negative assessments of the public life sphere, which encompasses the natural environment, the social welfare system, and the democratic system, also detract from the experiences of happiness, enjoyment, and accomplishment in Hong Kong. Surprisingly, access to digital communication devices helps Hong Kong people to experience a greater quality of life.

Environmental defensive expenditures,expectations and growth

Nowadays many agents meet defensive expenditures to protect themselves against environmental deterioration. Such expenditures may contribute to support economic growth. Environmental degradation, in fact, may induce agents to work harder to replace depleted environmental goods with substitute goods. The consequent rise in the activity level may further deplete the environment, worsening the agents’ expectations on the future environmental quality and increasing their demand for substitute goods. To examine this issue, we adopt a simple model in which agents formulate expectations on the future environment that can be right or wrong and examine how such expectations influence capital accumulation and growth.

Community Interests and Indicator System Success

Testing the validity of indicator systems is a task almost always left to the scientific community, in standard practice and in keeping with the quest for objectivity prevalent in politics and in society as a whole. This paper calls for a reinvigorated agenda within indicators research to question this practice and develop alternative methodologies to test the validity, legitimacy and impacts of indicator systems. The assumptions of objectivity are not realistic in contemporary policy contexts. As a result, the scientific community is not the only community with a stake in assessing an indicator system; it is perhaps not even the most important one. Four other community types with distinct interests in the design, use and impacts of indicator systems are identified. First is the community of elected officials, whose positions of power make their perspective important and unique; second is the community of engaged publics, whose stake is made clear by the principles of participatory and deliberative democracy; third are communities of cultural difference; and fourth are professional communities. The unique relationship each of these communities has with indicator systems, and thus the tests and challenges offered by each to the practice of indicators, is discussed through a case study of a public participation process for the development of a new set of regional sustainability indicators in Vancouver, Canada. The evidence suggests new research questions for scholars in policy and indicators studies who seek to better understand paths and barriers to implementation and impact in indicators practice, as well as lessons for other local indicators practices.

Life satisfaction and the economic and social characteristics of neighbourhoods

This paper uses data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey to investigate the association between neighbourhood effects and life satisfaction. We find that neighbourhood measures of social support and interaction and the absence of socio-economic deprivation are positively and significantly correlated with individual life satisfaction. Neighbourhood fixed effects, however, explain only an additional 1.5 to 2.5% of the variance in life satisfaction over the 14% explained by individual characteristics.