The standard of living is improving, at least in the developed countries. But the quality of life does not necessarily improve at the same time. Are people happier, more fulfilled, more creative, more able to develop their potential? Are their relationships, work and leisure as satisfying? Do they find their neighbourhood and environment as pleasant to live in? Is there a supportive network of family, friends and neighbours to help in old age or with childcare?
Social Indicators Research and other journals have detailed the work on this theme since the early '70s, but how would you set about measuring quality of life, as opposed to the standard of living?
These were the main questions posed by the Institute's competition, which accepted entries in any one or more of the following five categories (and the Institute intends to continue publicising material received in these categories):
(1) Idiosyncratic Personal Quality of Life Index if you had to design a questionnaire that you could fill in once a year, to ascertain from the resulting score to what extent your own personal quality of life had gone up or down, what would it consist of? The aim here is to broaden the perspective of social scientists who consider these issues. For instance, some people might want to assess how close they have been to nature, others to what extent their spiritual needs have been met or how much they have laughed of late - the questions can be ones that are fitted to you alone.
(2) Individual Quality of Life Index. As above, but the questionnaire should be applicable to anyone - for instance, a country's cultural differences could be allowed for by getting respondents to indicate what importance they attach to each question.
(3) Quality of Relationships Index. There may be overlap here with the Individual Index, but the only factor this would measure is the quality of relationships with family, lovers, neighbours, work colleagues and friends.
(4) Neighbourhood Quality of Life Index. This could either be one where inhabitants are asked to give their subjective assessments, or could be based on more 'objective' exterior assessment, or it could contain both these elements. The neighbourhood is defined here as any area that local people would tend to refer to as their immediate neighbourhood, in many areas not exceeding 1,000 inhabitants. Again the Index should be usable anywhere in the world. Most such Indexes to date have been from a Western perspective. The hope here is to draw up an Index that, if widely adopted, might encourage the developing world to avoid harmful imitation of the worst excesses of the lifestyle of affluent regions. A particularly satisfactory lifestyle in the third world (assuming basic needs for food, shelter and security are met) - such as that of a hill tribe in Thailand or a village in Kashmir's Ladakh - might then be able to score at least as high on a Quality of Life Index as a materially richer area such as Brixton in London or Easterhouse in Glasgow. The Index can measure negative or positive factors or both. Ideally it should be one that neighbourhoods would find useful in defending or developing their areas, and that they could even perhaps administer for themselves.
(5) International Quality of Life Index. There have been several attempts at this - Richard Estes' Index of Social Progress being probably the most advanced. But most attempts to date have been biased towards economic rather than ecological considerations, and have omitted people's own assessments of their well-being.
Besides those aims outlined above, the aims of this work are: to encourage people to consider and evaluate factors making for overall quality of life; to encourage leaders and others to take into account the effects of their actions on quality of life; to encourage the creation of human scale societies and aspiration towards non-material values; and to publicise the best work in this field.
(1) Would the Index proposed be applicable worldwide, without an inbuilt bias towards higher ratings for 'First World' countries? (2) Would the Index be reducible to a number, with a resulting league table, even if supplemented by fuller 'small' print? (3) Would it be largely independent of the economic standard of living? (4) Would it be relatively cheap and simple to administer? (5) Is it likely to prove credible, useful, and feasible (politically and in terms of funding)? Can it be implemented privately without relying on a United Nations agency or similar?
This chapter describes some of the ingredients said to make up this quality of life, and some of the attempts to measure it that have been made to date, in the hope of inspiring readers to create their own versions (and to submit them to the Institute).