Quality of Life Indexes
- Arguably, one of the most widely valued social indicators is happiness. Social researchers often use the term quality of life (QOL) to describe what is commonly called “happiness.” One of the leading pioneers of happiness research is Dr. Ruut Veenhoven Happy Life Years#References, emeritus-professor of 'social conditions for human happiness' at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands. He is also one of the chief critics of one of the most widely used QOL indexes, the Human Development Index (HDI) published by the United Nations Development Programme(UNDP). His 1996 paper “Happy Life-Expectancy, A Comprehensive Measure of Quality-of Life in Nations”, which appeared in the journal Social Indicators Research, proposed an alternative QOL index, called ‘happy life expectancy,’ (HLE). HLE may be a better indicator of happiness as it relies on subjective measures of happiness, as opposed to the largely materialistic measures that go into creating the HDI.
Read more about this topic: Happy Life Expectancy
Famous quotes containing the words quality of life, quality of, quality, life and/or indexes:
“The only questions worth asking today are whether humans are going to have any emotions tomorrow, and what the quality of life will be if the answer is no.”
—Lester Bangs (1948–1982)
“We’re headed for collapse, if you want my opinion, Missy. I can see it in the fallin’ off of the quality of vagrants. There was a time you could find real good company in almost any jungle you’d pick, men who could talk, men who’d read a book now and then; and now, what do you find, a lot of dirty little guttersnipes no decent tramp would want to associate with.
Well, it’s been that way all through history.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“The best quality tea must have creases like the leathern boot of Tartar horsemen, curl like the dewlap of a mighty bullock, unfold like a mist rising out of a ravine, gleam like a lake touched by a zephyr, and be wet and soft like a fine earth newly swept by rain.”
—Lu Yu (d. 804)
“Nothing goes sour more easily than the life of pleasure.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Our memories are card indexes consulted and then returned in disorder by authorities whom we do not control.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)