Standard of Living

9 Key excerpts on "Standard of Living"

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  A Brighter Future

  Improving the Standard of Living Now and for the Next Generation

  • Richard Holt, Daphne Greenwood(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The first is a desire to balance income growth with other aspects of human welfare such as health, aesthetics, human relationships, democratic principles, and the environment. The second is a growing realization that economic prosperity depends on environmental and social sustainability. In the next section, we discuss how a broader definition of the Standard of Living better reflects this dependence. W HAT IS THE S TANDARD OF L IVING AND W HAT D OES I MPROVING I T M EAN ? We recognize that coming up with a workable and measurable definition of the Standard of Living is difficult. That explains, in part, why economists have focused primarily on measurements of income or wealth. But another part of the story may also be methodological and ideological. Neoclassical economics is based on a particular view of individuals and their relationship to society and the environment. This view affects judgments about what comprises the Standard of Living and about how to improve it. Questioning these assumptions leads to different definitions and measurements of the Standard of Living, not to mention policy recommendations that may be antithetical to certain powerful interests. Reexamining what is meant by the Standard of Living is likely to influence the policy choices we make. That is the point, of course, but those who are happy with present policies and a narrower and more easily measured goal will disagree. To be clear about our meaning of the Standard of Living, we begin by making a distinction between different elements of well-being that are individual as compared to social. In Figure 1.1, we separate these elements into factors that are primarily individual (the smaller box on the left) and factors that are social, economic, and environmental and therefore more likely to be directly affected by public policy (the larger box on the right)

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  Urban Planning in a Changing World

  The Twentieth Century Experience

  • Freestone, Robert Freestone(Authors)
  • 2000(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  In this chapter, I explore what the shift from ‘Standard of Living’ to ‘quality of life’ tells us about urban planning, and about public policy in general, since the early 1900s. In some ways, public intervention has shown a relative constancy over the century; it has ostensibly remained predicated on the objective identification of people’s wants and the organization of collective action to meet their demands. But policy has changed, too, in the range of needs targeted, in the priorities that we establish among them, and in the ways in which we pursue their satisfaction. At the world scale, personal well-being and social development have been redefined to include political, cultural and environmental factors, and the role of the state has been recast from that of provider to that of enabler. As an indicator of material conditions, the Standard of Living has become but one variable among many to assess the quality of life. In Western countries, ‘Standard of Living’ and ‘quality of life’ have in fact become the keystones of radically opposed political discourses based on economic position. Maintaining their Standard of Living appears to be the goal of people who are losing ground in a post-industrial, high-tech economy, while ensuring their quality of life is the objective of those who are gaining from the societal transformation.

  The shift from ‘standard’ to ‘quality’ reflects the fact that, by the 1960s, material conditions of life had improved so significantly in industrialized nations that higher-order wants could be placed on the political agenda. Perhaps more important, dissatisfaction with the social and environmental side-effects of modernization provoked a fundamental critique of the modernist agenda of economic growth. In addition, the transformation of capitalism, together with the high-technology revolution that prompted it and the political revolution that it fostered in turn, led to a revision of modes of thinking and ways of doing in governments around the world. It is in this social, political and economic context that the passage from ‘standard’ to ‘quality’ must be studied. Yet at the same time, factors of change should not obscure elements of continuity. As concepts, the Standard of Living and the quality of life do show much overlap in meaning; as tools, both belong to an old tradition of needs-analysis. To grasp the origins of the two expressions, to understand the different approaches to policy and planning that they encapsulate, to point out the continuity that exists between them, and to learn from this analysis where urban planning stands at the dawn of a new century: these are the goals of this chapter.

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  America's Free Market Myths

  Debunking Market Fundamentalism

  • Joseph Shaanan(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  Only liberals would see this as a reduction in quality of life and have the temerity to challenge the majority’s freedom of choice with insinuations about servitude and indenture. What is tak- ing place is that consumers are borrowing from future, most likely higher earnings. It is an exaggeration to suggest that this represents a turn for the worse in people’s well-being. 2 DECLINING LIVING STANDARDS If once living standards were seen as a gauge of material well- being, in recent times the concept has been broadened. It now contains both economic and noneconomic measures of human well-being. Included, in addition to income or GDP per capita, are for example measures of employment, housing, affordable health care, life expectancy, class differences, envir- onmental factors, safety issues and other features that bring it closer to the more abstract notion of quality of life. Here the focus is more on the economic aspects. For most of the twentieth century the US was regarded as an affluent nation with a high per capita GDP with mostly rising standards of living. It was also acclaimed as the richest nation on earth. Americans were seen as having access to unusually large amounts of goods (especially after WW2) and benefiting from unparalleled economic opportunities and social mobility. In the past three decades improvements have occurred in nutrition, educational levels and declines in 112 J. SHAANAN birth rate mortality. 2 Many new products and services have been introduced including new medicines, computers, flat screen televisions, safer cars, smart phones, home delivery of most goods and many more. However, at the same time, standards of living for many have become stagnant if not declining, while other nations’ progress has ended the uniqueness of America’s Standard of Living. More worrisome, the middle class, whose progress was essentially America’s social-economic claim to fame, stopped improving as have poverty rates.

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  Quality of Life Research

  A Critical Introduction

  • Mark Rapley(Author)
  • 2003(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  Such definitions then result in a formal operationalization of the construct that remains not only completely culturally relative but also individually specific. Similarly problematic is the definitional preamble advanced by Schalock and Parmenter (2000: 4) in the consensus document on QOL produced for the International Association for the Scientific Study of Intellectual Disability. They write that: It is necessary to understand the semantic meaning of the quality of life concept, and its use throughout the world to appreciate fully its importance and relevance to persons. In reference to its meaning, ‘quality’ makes us think of the excellence or exquisite standard associated with human characteristics and positive values such as happiness, success, wealth, health, and satisfaction; whereas, ‘of life’ indicates that the concept concerns the very essence or essential aspects of human existence. QUALITY OF LIFE RESEARCH 52 This account again fails the test of universality at the same time as endeavouring to address it. Quite what the ‘essence’ of human existence is has bedevilled philosophy since Plato (as Schalock and Parmenter acknowledge) and there is, as yet, no sign of a ‘consensus’ on the question. Similarly, to claim that ‘values such as happiness, success, wealth, health, and satisfaction’ are universally ‘positive’ is simply to be blinded by ethnocentrism. Health, wealth and the pursuit of happiness may be the essence of the American dream, but to assert that this is true of humanity as a whole is intellectual and cultural imperialism. Later it is observed that: Quality of life encompasses the basic conditions of life such as adequate food, shelter, and safety plus life enrichers such as inclusive social, leisure, and community activities. These enrichers are based on the individual’s values, beliefs, needs and interests. (Schalock and Parmenter, 2000: 7) Again attempts at universality become immediately enmeshed in Western middle-class values.

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  Understanding and Solving Environmental Problems in the 21st Century

  Toward a New, Integrated Hard Problem Science

  • R. Costanza, S.E. Jorgensen(Authors)
  • 2002(Publication Date)
  • Elsevier Science

    (Publisher)

  221 Background Chapter 11 Quality of Life and the Distribution of Wealth and Resources R. Costanza, J. Farley and P. Templet Abstract Enhancing and sustaining the quality of human life is a primary goal of environmental, economic, and social policy. But how do we define and measure quality of life (QOL)? How is QOL distributed among people in the current generation and among the current and future generations? How do we model the dependence of QOL on the full range of environmental, economic, and social variables? Answering these questions is fundamental to understanding and solving environmental problems in the 21st century. 1. How is Quality of Life (QOL) defined? If we are to assess the impact of distribution of wealth and resources on QOL, we must have some clear idea of what QOL actually is. Is it synonymous with satisfaction? With happiness? With human well-being? With consumption? A quick perusal of the literature shows that QOL is a topic of research in a broad range of disciplines. In fields as disparate as advertising, economics, engineering, industry, medicine, politics, psychology, and sociology, improving QOL is often claimed as a primary goal. However, real paradoxes in interpretations of QOL exist. For example, a substantial motivation behind the environmental movement is to improve human QOL, and the same motivation can be argued for the industries (e.g., logging, mining, auto) that are so often its foes. Farquhar (1995, cited in Haas, 1999) claims that the term may be one of the most multidisciplinary in common use, yet even within a discipline there seems to be little consensus regarding its actual definition. In fact, a common criticism against the phrase 'Quality of Life' is that the concept lacks specificity; it has as many meanings as life has aspects (Schuessler and Fisher, 1985).

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  Advanced Introduction to Social Protection

  • James Midgley(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Edward Elgar Publishing

    (Publisher)

  58 4 Incomes, poverty and living standards Social protection was defined at the beginning of this book as the transfer of resources to individuals and families with current and future financial needs. It was also noted that a variety of schemes, like social assistance, social insurance, statutory employer mandates and social allowances, are used for this purpose. Together, they serve a welfare function by main- taining income during times of adversity or otherwise, by subsidizing incomes, reducing poverty and raising living standards. Although it was previously taken for granted that social protection has a positive effect on people’s well-being, the current emphasis on outcome evaluation in social science research has prompted those working in the field to undertake more systematic studies of social protection’s impact. However, there are many challenges to designing and implementing outcome studies which accurately assess whether social protection increases incomes, reduces poverty and raises living standards. One challenge concerns a lack of agreement about the meaning of terms like poverty and living standards and about how they should be opera- tionalized. As is common in the social sciences, there are differences of opinion on definitions but, as was shown in Chapter 1, some consensus has been reached on how key terms should be defined and measured. Researchers have been most successful in conceptualizing and opera- tionalizing poverty. On the other hand, there is far less agreement about the definition of living standards and their different components such as health, nutrition, education and other social conditions. Nevertheless, scholars have turned to government databases which routinely collect information on these conditions which, they believe, provide useful infor- mation about living standards and the quality of people’s lives in different countries.

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  Quality of Life and Living Standards Analysis

  An Econometric Approach

  • Sergey Artemyevich Aivazian(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter

    (Publisher)

  Smith, 1776 ]. According to Smith, “the wealth of the nation – is the answer to the question of how the nation is equipped with all the necessary commodities and conveniences”, and the latter is precisely what determines the quality of life of the population.

  Smith pointed to the two tasks of political economy (which he regarded as a branch of science intended for statesmen and legislators). The first task is to ensure that government revenue is sufficient to enable citizens to provide their own income, necessary for their existence. The second task is to ensure that the state income is sufficient for the exercise of public functions.

  The concept of economic well-being emerged in the heyday of economic thought, which largely explains the desire of scientists of the time to measure quality of life in monetary units. Proponents of this concept are united in their belief that the quality of human life depends solely on its material prosperity. Differences in their thinking were related only to the choice of economic indicators used to assess the level of material well-being, and ultimately, – to assess the quality of life. All kinds of different things were used as these indicators: for example, the gross domestic product (GDP), or the number of years during which the person received a “decent” income or anthropometric measurements of children under 6 years old or the so-called green net national product, or based on consumption, accumulation of inventories and income inequality “index of economic well-being” (for more on this, see point 1.3.1 ).

  Today, however, the global scientific community as well as acting heads of national socio-economic structures more and more come to a conclusion about the need to expand the concept of economic development. It is emphasized that the purely economic indicators such as GDP, income and consumption should be supplemented by indicators of employment, social conditions and the environment. National statistical offices are encouraged to give more attention not to productivity indicators but to the measurements of well-being and quality of life in its broadest sense [Report, 2010–2011]. One of the areas of modern scientific thought that is developing this idea further is presented, for example, in the work of Easterlin [Easterlin, 2002

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  Quality of Life

  Biopsychosocial Perspectives

  • Floriana Irtelli, Federico Durbano, Simon George Taukeni, Floriana Irtelli, Federico Durbano, Simon George Taukeni(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • IntechOpen

    (Publisher)

  1 Section 1 A Global Overview about Quality of Life 3 Chapter 1 Quality of Life and Biopsychosocial Paradigm: A Narrative Review of the Concept and Specific Insights Floriana Irtelli and Federico Durbano Abstract The quality of life concept was born in the 1970s within the social sciences and soon it arrived in the field of medicine and health, where this notion has been considered as a criterion to evaluate health interventions. The World Health Organization defines quality of life as the subjective perception individuals have of their life position, in their cultural context and value system, in relation to their objectives, expectations, standards, and worries. It is a very complex and articu-lated conception, and as a matter of fact in this chapter, we will analyze an overview about this topic, to examine it in depth, and clarify this concept; synthetically, we can note that the quality of life is specified by the perception of one’s physical, psychological, and emotional health, by the degree of personal independence, by social relations, and by the type of interaction with one’s context. We can note that this construct is broader than that of health, it is not a synonym of it, and it is also important to point out that the definition of the World Health Organization about this topic connects elements resulting from an enormous amount of studies. In this sense, being healthy is considered one of the numerous quality of life dimen-sions, and health-facilitating behaviors are judged as predictors of the quality of life itself. Moreover, the definition of quality of life always includes a reference to the individual’s physical state, but it is not considered only on the basis of a person’s bodily functions, detectable with standardized parameters, since it is described in relation to the perceived satisfaction degree regarding this functionality level.

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  The SAGE Handbook of Public Opinion Research

  • Wolfgang Donsbach, Michael W Traugott, Wolfgang Donsbach, Michael W Traugott(Authors)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  After momentum slowed greatly in the 1980s, the quality-of-life (QOL) concept helped the indicator movement regain widespread use, through numerous rankings based on well-being indexes of the ‘best’ places to live, to work, or to do business. The theoretical appeal of the QOL concept is partly due to the perceived importance of measuring individuals’ subjective satisfaction with various life domains and with life as a whole. QOL became a concept that bridged marketing research with social indicators. Marketing had far-reaching impacts through its measures of consumer confidence and satisfaction and their impact on satisfaction with life. These attractions led to the mid-1990s’ founding of the multi-disciplinary International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies (see http://www.isqols.org). The great richness of available social data encouraged a return to the task of composite index construction, like (1) the comparisons of nations with respect to the overall quality of life in the Human Development Index (United Nations Development Programme, 2004); (2) in the United States, the Fordham Index of Social Health (Miringoff & Miringoff, 1999); and (3) the Child Well-Being Index developed by Land, Lamb, and Mustillo (2001). Comprehensive national social reports in the tradition pioneered by Ogburn (1933) and by Olson (1969) clearly have faltered in the United States, but their key ideas of monitoring and forecasting are evident in subject-matter-specific publications, includ-ing Science Indicators (published by the National Science Foundation), The Condition of Education (published by the Department of Education), the Report to the Nation on Crime and Justice (published by the Department of Justice), and numerous Census Bureau publications. The Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics has begun an annual publication on America’s Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being .

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