Brief review of world quality of life

Click here to go back to the reports page.
First Copyright August 2005.  May be used provided proper citation is given.  See note at bottom.

Introduction:

In this report, we discuss quality of life throughout the world. We first briefly describe the meaning of quality of life. We then describe trends in several major components of quality of life (economic wellbeing, health and literacy). Finally, we briefly discuss how quality of life appears to be distributed throughout the world.

I. What is quality of life?

There is no universally agreed on definition, but quality of life indicators usually include in their scales at least some of these dimensions: economic wellbeing, health, education, freedom, social participation and self perceived wellbeing or satisfaction (André and Bitondo, 2001)

In addition, many of the quality of life scales seem to correlate fairly highly with each other.

Table 1
Correlations among quality of life scales.

Quality of life scales also generally correlate with 'objective' indicators. However, freedom and subjective indicators of happiness or life satisfaction seem less correlated, and so might be a seperate concept.

Table 2
Correlations with quality of life scales

It seems reasonable that quality of life indicators are intercorrelated, since many of their components are intercorrelated as well.

Table 3
Correlations  among basic indicators

Another approach to measuring quality of life is to develop a set of key indicators. Several of the groups measuring quality of life described above (e.g., Estes, 1997; UNDP, 2004) also use sets of indicators. In fact, this is the primary approach of the UNDP. They mention, for example, that human development or democratic participation does not depend on national income (UNDP, 2004), thus a set of indicators can give a more complete picture of human development. See Shackman, Liu and Wang (2005) for a fuller discussion.

Return to top

II. Trends in indicators of quality of life

Infant Mortality Rate

• In general, infant mortality rates (IMR) are lowest in Western Europe and North America, and highest in Sub-Saharan Africa.

• IMR in Western Europe and North America is very much lower than it is in any other regions.

• In general, IMR decreased between 1990 and 2000, except for the Commonwealth of Independent States, where it increased.

Table 4.
Infant Mortality Rates
(Infant deaths per 1,000 births)

• There is a great deal of variability within regions.

• In Asia, in 2000, IMR varied from over 100 infant deaths per 1,000 births (Afghanistan and Bhutan) to less than 5 per 1,000 (Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore).

• Eight countries have IMR lower than 20 per 1,000.

• Removing three very large countries with high infant mortality rates (Afghanistan, Pakistan and India) lowers the IMR of Asia to 33.7 in 2000.

• Sub-Saharan Africa varies as well, from over 150 per 1,000 (Angola, Liberia, Sierra Leone) to a low of less than 20 per 1,000 (Seychelles, Mauritius and Reunion). However only three countries have IMR lower than 20 per 1,000, and no countries have IMR lower than 5 per 1,000.

GDP per Capita

• In general, GDP per Capita is highest in Western Europe and North America, and lowest in Sub-Saharan Africa.

• GDP per Capita in Western Europe and North America is very much higher than it is in any other regions.

• GDP per Capita increased between 1980 and 2000 in Western Europe and in Northern America, and increased slightly in Asia.

• GDP per Capita did not increase, or declined, in Latin America and the Caribbean, Near East, Sub-Saharan Africa

GDP per Capita is not avialable from the data sources used in this data set for most of Oceania. Also, most of the countries in the "Commonwealth of Independent States" and "Eastern Europe" do not have data prior to 1995. However, the table below shows GDP per Capita for these latter groups for 1995 and 2000.

• There is a great deal of variability within regions.

• In Asia, in 2000, GDP per Capita varied from $200 or less per capita (Afghanistan and Bhutan) to over $20,000 per capita (Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore).

• Thirteen countries have GDP per capita less than $1,000 per capita.

• Sub-Saharan Africa varies as well, from 10 countries with less than $200 per capita (Congo, Ethiopia, Somalia, Burundi, Eritria, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Niger, Mozambique and Tanzania) to 5 countries with more than $3,000 per capita (Botswana, Gabon, South Africa, Mauritius and Seychelles)..

Literacy Rate

• In general, literacy rates are lowest in sub-saharan Africa, and highest in the CIS and LAC.

• Literacy rates increased throughout the world between 1990 and 2004

Table 6
Literacy Rates
(percent of adult population that is literate)

• In 2004, there was a great deal of variability within some regions (Asia, Sub Saharan Africa), and little variability within some regions (CIS & EE, LAC).

• In Asia, literacy rates in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal are very much lower (below 45%) than are literacy rates elsewhere.  Ten countries have literacy rates above 85%.

• In Sub Saharan Africa, literacy rates varied from 50% or below (e.g., Central African Republic, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Benin, Senegal) to above 70% (e.g., Ghana, Botswana, Kenya, South Africa, Zimbabwe).  Niger had the lowest at 17%.

• In LAC, only Haiti had a literacy rate below 69%. Similarly, in the Near East, only Yemen had a literacy rate below 74%.

• All of the CIS and EE states have literacy rates above 97%.

III. Regional comparisons of quality of life

It seems pretty clear that there are three distinct groups.

• Western Europe and Northern America (mainly USA and Canada). These have low infant mortality, high GDP per capita and high literacy.

• Sub-Saharan Africa. The countries here, in general, have high infant mortality rates, low GDP per capita and lower literacy rates.

• All the other areas, with middle levels in IRM, GDP per capita and literacy (except CIS, with lower GDP per capita and higher literacy).

Table 7.

• It is also interesting to note that the high literacy rate in the CIS and Eastern Europe do not correlate with lower IMR or higher GDP per capita.

IV Appendix

A. Comparisons with reports from other sources

Here we list other reports that show similar trends..

State of the World's Children
at the Unicef Publications page   http://www.unicef.org/publications/
the statistical tables are here   http://www.unicef.org/sowc05/english/statistics.html
showing data by country and region.
Table 1. infant mortality rates, 1960 and 2003
Table 5. Adult Literacy Rates, 1990 and 2000, for male and female (but not for total)
Table 6 birth rate, death rate, life expectancy, 1970 and 2003
Table 10 under 5 mortality rates, 1960, 1990 and 2003, and rate of progress.

Beyond Economic Growth  http://www.worldbank.org/depweb/beyond/beyond.htm
has descriptions of health, economics, education and many other trends.


B. Data Sources for this report.

Data for this report are from PD-Plus   at  http://gsociology.icaap.org/dataupload.html
This data file includes descriptions of data and sources. All of the data in PD-Plus are included in the data set by permission.
The UN's Human Development Indicator,and the World Database of Happiness satisfaction with life scale are not included in this data set, but are used in our research by permission.

See below for list of all data sets used in this report.

World Database of Happiness
http://www1.eur.nl/fsw/happiness/
Satisfaction with life, rank on a 1-10 scale.

F. Additional Resources

The International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies   http://www.isqols.org/   One of their Bibliographic Resources includes Ken Land's Social Indicators Essay in the Encyclopedia of Sociology  available here   http://manta.cs.vt.edu/isqols/kenlandessay.htm   which is a review of the history and use of quality of life indicators.

Prepared by gene shackman, wang xun and ya-lin liu
First Copyright August 2005.  May be freely used provided proper citation is given.

Cite as

Shackman, Gene, Ya-Lin Liu and Xun Wang. 2005. Brief review of world quality of life.  Available at
http://gsociology.icaap.org/report/cqual.html

Return to top