What is Quality of Life?

How can we measure it?

How can we compare it from country to country?

Composite Index Measurements of Quality of Life

The concept of human development (HD) has many dimensions. Health, education and standard of living are dimensions that are basic and can be measured. Other factors could be considered, but these are either are hard to measure or overlap with existing dimensions - Examples: political freedom, environment, child mortality. HD can never be captured in a single indicator and therefore composite indices have been created.

HDI (Human Development Index): a summary measure of human development using three indices:• leading a long and healthy life (Life expectancy

at birth);

• education (mean years of schooling and expected years of schooling)

EYS: Number of years of schooling that a child of school entrance age can expect to receive if prevailing patterns of age-specific enrolment rates persist throughout the child’s life.

• decent standard of living (GNI per capita in US$) GNI: Total value of goods and services produced in a country together with balance of income and payments to/from other countries

HDI map 2011: 4 levels of development

HDI map 2011

The most developed countries

The least developed countries

What part of the picture are we not seeing with the HDI?

Inequality-adjusted HDI (aka IHDI)Like all averages, the HDI conceals disparities in

human development across the population within the same country. The IHDI takes into account not only the average achievements of a country on health, education and income, but also how those achievements are distributed among its citizens by “discounting” each dimension’s average value according to its level of inequality.

Under perfect equality the IHDI is equal to the HDI, but falls below the HDI when inequality rises

Source: UNDP

The GINI (Generalized Inequality Index) Index

The Gini coefficient is commonly used as a measure of inequality of income among a county’s inhabitants. If all income is perfectly shared, the GINI index would be 0.

• GDI (Gender-related Development Index): the HDI adjusted for gender inequality. After calculating dimension index for each sex – they are combined in a way to penalize gender inequality (equally distributed index). The GDI is calculated by taking the unweighted average of the three equally distributed indices

Gender Inequality Index (GII)The disadvantages facing women and girls are a major source of inequality. All too often, women and girls are discriminated against in health, education and the labour market — with negative repercussions for their freedoms. The purpose of the GII is to better expose differences in the distribution of achievements between women and men. It is calculated by examining the discrepancy between the HDI for males and the HDI for females.Source: UNDP

Gender Inequality Index map 2011

Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) The index examines poverty across the same three dimensions as the HDI and

shows the number of people who are multidimensionally poor (suffering poverty deprivations in 33% of indicators) and the number of deprivations

with which poor households typically contend

MPI Map(2011)% suffering deprivations in 33% of weighted indicators

The Environmental Performance Index (EPI): is a method of quantifying and numerically benchmarking the environmental performance of a country's policies.

Limitations of Development Stats• Inequality ... but some stats address this.

• lack of clarity as to what “progress” and “development” really are. Should booming military production be considered an increase in development? If most citizens don’t benefit from an increase in GDP, should that be considered development?

• much human activity is NOT counted in UN stats; a subsistence farmer earns little or no cash, therefore generates no GDP. If they switch to cash crops, GDP goes up, but food security goes down. Development?