You may find plenty of definitions of quality of life on the Internet, in the encyclopedias and academic journals. Most of the sources give mutually agreeable statements both on the definition of quality of life as well as how it is measured.
Definition of quality of life
Generally, quality of life is defined as well-being of a person and society. Well-being describes the condition of an individual or group when it comes to: physical well-being, social well-being, economic/material well-being, psychological well-being, spiritual well-being and medical state.
If your experiences in these areas are positive, it means that you have high level of well-being. For example, your annual salary is above the average salary in your country or you rarely visit a doctor seeking medical attention. On another hand, if you live in a place with relatively high crime rate, high unemployment and poor healthcare system, it means that you have low level of well-being.
When it comes to measuring quality of life in the whole country or society, we can also consider ecology, economics, politics and culture to assess how good life in those countries is.
How to measure quality of life?
Quality of life is different from standard of living. Standard of living is related primarily to your income (how much money you earn). It can be measured by GDP per capita. Therefore, quality of life is harder to measure in the long-term as it will often depend on personal experiences and all the aspects that influence person’s life.
Scientifically, the quantitative measurements to evaluate our quality of life on the global scale include:
1. Human Development Index: measures life expectancy, education and income per capita. (Norway 1st, Australia 2nd, Switzerland 3rd as of 2015)
2. World Happiness Report: measures income per capita, healthy life expectancy, having someone to count on, perceived freedom to make life choices, freedom from corruption and generosity. (Switzerland 1st, Iceland 2nd, Denmark 3rd as of 2013)
3. Physical Quality of Life Index: measures basic literacy rate, infant mortality and life expectancy at age 1. (Ireland 1st, Switzerland 2nd, Norway 3rd as of 2005)
4. Happy Planet Index: subjective life satisfaction, life expectancy at birth and ecological footprint per capita. (Costa Rica 1st, Vietnam 2nd, Colombia 3rd as of 2012)
5. Where-to-be-born Index: income per capita, life expectancy at birth, divorce rates, the state of political freedoms, unemployment rate, climate, homicide rates and ratings for risk from crime and terrorism, membership in social organizations, ratings for corruption, the share of seats in parliament held by women. (Switzerland 1st, Australia 2nd, Norway 3rd in 2013).
6. Popsicle Index: measures the % of people in a community who believe that a child can leave their home, go to the nearest place to buy a popsicle and come home alone safely. However, this index is mainly used to measure safety in different neighborhoods.
Other ways of measuring quality of life
While I agree that all of the above indicators can give us a brief insight into quality of life in almost every country on earth, there certainly are many more areas of our lives that can be looked into when it comes to measuring well-being.
For example, to express spiritual well-being, we may look at the number of books read in each country every year. Or, to measure emotional well-being, we may investigate how many joyful hours parents spend with their children every month.
Another idea would be to look across different age groups in order to find out bullying rates at high schools, or how much time old people spent alone in their apartments. Teenagers may have different expectations from the elderly what makes life good. The first group does not want to be bullied while the other group does not want to spend too much time alone.
It will be really interesting and yet valuable, if each of us can create personal indices to evaluate our own quality of life. I have not thought about my own well-being index yet, but I will try to think more about that in the next couple of months.
