Search

This paper presents the Provincial Indices of Multiple Deprivation that were constructed by the authors at ward level using 2001 Census data for each of South Africa’s nine provinces. The principles adopted in conceptualising the indices are described and multiple deprivation is defined as a weighted combination of discrete dimensions of deprivation. The methodological approach used is outlined and key findings are presented for one province—the Eastern Cape. The paper summarises the ways in which the research is being developed further and the potential uses of these tools for policy and research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent cross-country growth studies have found that ethnolinguistic fractionalization is an important explanatory variable of long-run growth performance. This paper highlights some limitations of cross-country studies by focusing on the time series evidence for South Africa. In presenting variation over time in a number of social dimensions, this paper adds longitudinal evidence on a range of dimensions that have been linked to long run economic development. Given South Africa’s history of ethnic and racial politics, it constitutes a useful case study to explore the dynamics of the possible effects of ethnolinguistic fractionalization on growth. We introduce several new sets of fractionalization indicators for South Africa: ethnolinguistic, religious and cultural fractionalization, and a polarization measure. The results of this study provide important nuance to the existing body of evidence, for the use of fractionalization indices in growth studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a new index of governance based on the Alkire-Foster methodology and compares it with the Mo Ibrahim Index of African Governance. The proposed new index improves on existing measures of governance in two ways. First, it is able to incorporate both cardinal and ordinal variables without having to assign cardinal meaning to ordinal variables. The cardinalization of ordinal variables can lead to ambiguous rankings depending on the choice of the cardinal scale. Second, by borrowing the mechanism of cutoffs found in poverty measurement literature, the index can focus attention on nations deprived in terms of governance. The index is computed for the 48 countries of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation's data. The groups of best-performing and worst-performing nations identified by each of the two methods are largely similar. However, there are some differences among the middle order governance nations. An additional advantage of the proposed methodology is that it involves counting each country's achievements in the dimensions of governance, which can be presented in a report card of governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both the potential pitfalls of macro-economic policies focused on stimulating economic growth and the problems involved in using GDP as a measure of well-being or economic welfare have long been recognized by economists and researchers from other social sciences. Therefore, it is no surprise that alternative measures for policy-making have been developed and promoted since the early 1970s. Over the past 5 years, the development of these measures has gained momentum both politically and academically. However, most research efforts concentrate on the development and promotion of individual indicators, while paying less attention to the wide range of indicators already available and to theoretical insights. As a result, few classification schemes of alternative measures exist today to help policy-makers in selecting a proper set of indicators. This paper first looks into the different classification schemes available in the literature and outlines the weaknesses in each of these. Afterwards, an alternative classification scheme is introduced that draws on the notions of well-being, economic welfare and sustainability. A further sub-categorization is built on the different approaches that are used to quantitatively capture the notions. By focusing on the underlying concepts that the different measures aim to quantify, the alternative classification scheme overcomes the drawbacks of the existing schemes. Finally, 23 alternative measures for policy-making are reviewed and organized into the newly developed classification scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a new analytical framework for assessing spatial disparities among countries. It takes for granted that the analysis of a country’s performance cannot be limited solely to either economic or social factors. The aim of the paper is to combine relevant economic and ‘non-economic’ (mainly social) aspects of a country’s performance in an integrated logical framework. Based on this idea, a structural simultaneous equation model will be presented and estimated in order to explore the direction of the causal relationship between economic and non-economic aspects of a country’s performance. Furthermore, an exploration of the trajectory that each country has registered over time along a virtuous path will be offered. By means of a matrix persistency/transition analysis, the countries will be classified in clusters of good/bad performance. One of the most interesting conclusions concerns the inability of most countries to turn the higher educational skills of the population into greater economic performance over time. In addition, our analysis also shows that making an accurate picture record and formulating related policy aiming at environmental care is highly desirable. It is surprising that only a few countries have reached a favourable economic and environmental performance simultaneously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the interest grew in research on measuring the “quality of life” (QOL) in cities. This interest comes from the success QOL measurement achieved in understanding communities’ needs, tracking changes in different aspects of life and assessing the most desired types of future development among citizens. This research highlights the importance of measuring QOL in Jordan. It examines the opportunity and applicability of carrying out QOL measurement studies in Amman, the capital city. It outlines different scopes, visions and approaches that can be used to study and measure QOL and the most suitable mechanism that can work firmly. A professional top–bottom approach was used for that. Thirty-three experts with different backgrounds were interviewed in order to determine the appropriate scopes and visions for studying QOL, define the most significant aspects affecting QOL in Amman, and define the appropriate domains to be studied. Results were analyzed, limitations were defined and the final set of representative domains was stated. Domains were ranked according to their relevance and the important -underneath- aspects were defined in the form of models, each representing a certain domain. The paper attempts by the end to set the stage for setting up criteria for measuring QOL in Amman and to open the way for future QOL research to take place in Jordan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social quality has been presented as a theory that can explain economic and social progress of the daily lives of a population. The components of social quality include: socio-economic security, social inclusion, social cohesion and social empowerment. The social quality perspective views people as interacting within collective identities that provide the contexts of self-realisation. The paper tests the social quality theory by focusing on the relationship between social inclusion and social cohesion, the notion of social relations, to socio-economic security using the context of the family as a facilitator of self-realisation. Using data from the Israel Social Survey 2003, six indicators of socio-economic security were analysed. There was a small but positive and significant relationship between social inclusion and socio-economic security. We found no relationship between socio-economic security and social cohesion. These findings tend to undermine those aspects of social quality theory which posit close connections between these elements on a conceptual level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most research on the non-economic quality of life have been (a) on a national level or performed on cross-country comparisons, and/or (b) used subjective indicators to measure how people perceive their non-economic quality of life. In this paper, our main contribution is to construct objective indicators of the non-economic quality of life for 354 sub-national magisterial districts in South Africa. We also compare changes in these indicators over time, and consider methodological issues in the construction of objective indicators of non-economic quality of life. We find that although income does matter for the overall quality of life, non-income components of the quality of life can make an important difference. We find a number of places with low incomes that have been able to achieve higher than expected outcomes in terms of the non-economic quality of life, and that some of the relative income poor areas have improved their non-economic ranking between 1996 and 2004. We also find that the geographical/environmental quality of life in South Africa is better in non-urban areas, where fewer of the country’s population is residing. Significant improvements in the overall quality of life may be achieved through improvements in the urban natural environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a sequel to Sirgy et al. ( Social Ind. Res. 68(3) (2004) 251), “The Impact of Globalization on a Country’s Quality of Life: Toward an Integrated Model” published in Social Indicators Research. That paper conceptualized globalization in terms of the free flow of four major components: (1) goods and services, (2) people, (3) capital, and (4) information. The current paper focuses on the free flow of goods and services, one of the four major components of globalization. Specifically, we (1) articulate the trade globalization construct, (2) show the complex mediating effects between trade globalization and QOL, and (3) describe under what conditions these positive vs. negative QOL effects are likely to occur. We develop a set of theoretical propositions to capture these mediating and moderating effects. Based on the theoretical model, we suggest the following public policy recommendations: (1) Encourage exporting firms not to outsource jobs. (2) Encourage firms to export more products in ways that can enhance their production efficiency. (3) Discourage firms from exporting culturally sensitive (and possibly offensive) products to culturally distant countries. (4) Encourage firms to export more products with potential for technology transfer. (5) Encourage firms in industries with a significant comparative advantage to increase exports. (6) Encourage imports of products that do not compete with high employment domestic industries where workers cannot easily transition to more productive employment. (7) Impose trade barriers as short-term solution to help␣threatened industries while helping those industries retool to become more competitive. (8)␣Assist displaced workers by re-training them to shift to industries with comparative advantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the proliferation of social indicator databases, the need for powerful techniques to study patterns of change has grown. In this paper, the utility of spatial data analytical methods such as exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA) is suggested as a means to leverage the information contained in social indicator databases. The principles underlying ESDA are illustrated using a study of clusters and outliers based on data for a child risk scale computed for countries in the state of Virginia. Evidence of spatial clusters of high child risks is obtained along the Southern region of Virginia. The utility of spatial methods for state agencies in monitoring social indicators at various localities is discussed. A six-step framework that integrates spatial analysis of key indicators within a monitoring framework is presented; we argue that such a framework could be useful in enhancing communication between State and local planners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green national accounting has existed in a variety of forms for just over thirty years. Having essentially begun as environmental cost adjustments to Gross Domestic Product, green national accounting now includes such indicators as the Genuine Progress Indicator, Genuine Savings, and the Ecological Footprint. This paper serves as an overview or stock-take of green national accounting initiatives and as a means of assessing the major developments since the early 1970s. It is concluded that a suite of indicators is required to convey a complete picture of a nation’s sustainable development performance. In addition, economic indicators need to be supplemented by biophysical indicators, although the latter should never be incorporated directly into national income accounts since they serve as indicators of ecological sustainability, not of economic performance. Finally, the fact that a number of recently established indicators are still in the embryonic stage of development means that considerable refinement is necessary before they are likely to be broadly accepted by the policy-making community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Composite indicators (CIs) have increasingly been accepted as a useful tool for benchmarking, performance comparisons, policy analysis and public communication in many different fields. Several recent studies show that as a data aggregation technique in CI construction the weighted product (WP) method has some desirable properties. However, a problem in the application of the WP method is the difficulty and subjectivity in determining the weights for sub-indicators. In this paper, we extend the WP method and propose a multiplicative optimization approach to constructing CIs. This approach requires no prior knowledge of the weights for sub-indicators. Instead, the weights are generated by solving a series of multiplicative data envelopment analysis type models that can be transformed into equivalent linear programs. Additional relevant information on the weights, if available, can be incorporated into the proposed models. We apply the proposed approach to the 2005 data of 27 economies in the Asia and the Pacific region in the United Nations’ Human Development Index study and present the results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the suicide rates of 23 cities and counties in Taiwan from 1983 to 2001. We found that a combination of economic and social variables can significantly account for the tremendous variations in suicide rates across Taiwan’s cities and counties over the last two decades. The level of income per capita in a region appears as the most important predictor of suicide rates. However, some sociological correlates (such as divorce rate) which were less powerful in explaining suicide rate variations in the earlier study appear to exert more significant influence over suicide rates when eight more recent years of information are added, as in the current study. This study also uncovered several gender differences in the determination of regional suicide rates, such as the proportion of elderly population in the region, and the impacts of earthquake and unemployment. Furthermore, this study confirmed the linkages between natural disaster (earthquake) and suicide, between economic and social miseries (unemployment and divorce, respectively) and suicide, as well as those between demographics (aboriginal and elderly sub-population groups) and suicide. This may help to identify high-risk groups or areas where suicide prevention and intervention efforts should be concentrated on or directed to. Lastly, the local suicide crisis-intervention agencies are found to be significantly effective in reducing suicide rates of the community they serve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Africa has a Gini co-efficient of 62, one of the world’s highest (Finmark: Project FinScope 2004 and 2005, FinMark Trust, Johannesburg). Hence, measures of wealth are ubiquitous social indicators in South Africa. However, a growing emphasis in government towards measurable service delivery targets and remedial action to redress the inequalities of our past makes the reliable measurement of people’s quality of life in greater depth in quantitative terms an imperative. We have developed a simple framework to measure people’s quality of life in key domains that extend beyond that simply of wealth, using composite indices to allow progress to be tracked and to make valid comparisons across our diverse population. Termed the Everyday Quality of Life Index (EQLi), it comprises a suite of measures encompassing socio-economic status (with special reference to poverty), urbanisation, health (nutrition, exercise and fitness), stress/pressure, quality of the environment, satisfaction of human needs, connectivity, optimism, subjective well-being (happiness, after Diener and Lucas: 2000, in M. Lewis, J.M. Haviland (eds.), Handbook of Emotions. (2nd ed) (Guilford, New York)), and the overall measure of well-being, the EQLi itself. The initial framework was developed from a structured questionnaire administered to a probability sample of 2000 South African adults in 2002. From this, a 52-item shortlist was derived to create the series of measures. This has been tested and refined in three subsequent annual studies, each of 3500 people across urban and rural South Africa. In 2004, items involving work as well as determining the balance of skills and challenges at work using the concept of “flow” (Csikszentmihalyi: 1990, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Harper and Row, New York)) were added. This paper outlines the rationale behind the selection and development of these measures, describes the EQL of South Africans using these and other key measures and concludes with implications for policy-makers and service providers in South Africa. Some marketing implications are also given: there is a growing emphasis worldwide on corporate social investment initiatives and, particularly in South Africa, on community upliftment and development – poverty alleviation and improving the lives of the disadvantaged (“people” rather than “consumers”). Further, people’s well-being affects how they react to marketing activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a previous paper in this journal (Headey et al., 2000) a comparison was made between three so-called ‘best cases’ of welfare regime types, the ‘Liberal’ US, 'the ‘Corporatist’ Germany and the ‘Social-Democratic’ Netherlands. The main conclusion was that the Social-Democratic welfare state performed best on nearly all social and economic indicators that were applied. That paper was based on the ten-year datasets drawn from the national socio-economic panel studies. For this paper we use the unique comparative panel dataset of the European Community Household Panel. At the time of research, only three waves of data covering the 1994–96 period were available. Instead of three countries representing three different welfare state types as in the earlier paper we cover twelve countries allowing us to distinguish a fourth Southern or Mediterranean welfare regime type and to compare the performance of the four regimes. Compared to the Headey's et al. paper we focus on the comparative analysis of the level of deprivation and pay less attention to income poverty and inequality. Because we consider deprivation to be part of the concept of social exclusion (see also Atkinson et al., 2002) our results also provide evidence on how welfare regimes across the EU cope with social exclusion. We conclude that the Social-Democratic welfare state does a good job of preventing income poverty but performs less well in equalising levels of deprivation. Our results also show that the immature Southern welfare states perform worse with respect to preventing deprivation. Trying to explain levels of deprivation by estimating Tobit panel regressions it turned out that the impact of regime type remains significant though limited. Common, ‘structural’ disparities between the countries and regimes in terms of economic welfare, the demographic structure, and the employment situation explain most of the variance across countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Africa celebrated ten years of democracy in 2004. This special issue of Social Indicators Research (SIR) reviews developments that have impacted on the quality of life of ordinary South Africans during the transition period. The issue updates an earlier volume of SIR (Volume 41) published in 1997 and as a stand-alone volume. The earlier volume was initiated following SIR editor Alex Michalos’ first visit to South Africa. This update on quality of life in South Africa follows on his return visit to the country in 2004 to see firsthand the changes that had occured in the meantime. This introductory article outlines major achievements of and setbacks for the new democracy and the challenges facing it in future. It provides the backround for the evaluations of a range of quality of life domains and issues including poverty and inequality, crime, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, migration and housing, religiosity, reconciliation, and optimism for the future which are covered in the eleven articles that follow. The introduction divides the articles under the headings of challenges, achievements, monitoring quality of life, and social capital for the future. The overview article concludes that improvements in quality of life have been uneven but goodwill and a positive outlook bode well for South African quality of life in future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a rebuttal of Easterlin (1995), Hagerty and Veenhoven (2003) analyze data for 21 countries and conclude that “growing national income does go with greater happiness.” But the U.S. experience does not support this conclusion, which they obtain only by mixing together two sets of noncomparable surverys. Moreover, the result of studies of European countries and the U.S. by other scholars do not support their claim either. Furthermore, the experience of 6 out of 7 of their non-European countries fail to support their claim. Finally, if countries in their analysis with quite similar growth rates are grouped, one finds quite disparate trends in happiness, suggesting that factors other than growth in income are responsible for the differential trends in happiness. Instead of straining to feed the illusion that a focus on economic growth will create happiness, an approach is needed that explores the impact on national trends in life satisfaction, not just of material goods, but also of family life, health, work utility, and the like. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unemployment and GDP are widely used as proxies for a broader concept of well-being in the European Union, especially at regional level. This paper asks whether such an approach is reasonable. Using data from a range of sources, it examines the association between unemployment, GDP and a number of alternative well-being indicators in five domains – material welfare, education, health, productive activity and social participation. It finds that GDP per capita is not a good proxy for wider regional well-being within a country, but that the regional unemployment rate performs reasonably well. Pooling fifteen member states together, however, regional GDP is a better predictor of a region’s well-being than unemployment. This is because national GDP tells us more about how a country is doing overall than the national unemployment rate. These findings have implications for the European Council’s decision to treat variation in the regional unemployment rates as the sole indicator of regional inequality within Member States, and for the allocation of the Structural Funds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An operational definition for “rural area” is pivotal if proposals, policies and decisions aimed at optimising the distribution of resources, closing the gap on inequity between areas and raising standards of living for the least advantaged populations are to be put in place. The concept of rurality, however, is often based on alternative and conflicting definitions, requiring clarification of the underlying theoretical model. Traditionally a geographical area has been classified as rural by taking into account either the number of inhabitants or population density. Two kinds of problem are raised with this approach, however, namely: it is inherently difficult to describe such a complex concept as rurality with a single variable; and reducing the concept down to a rural/urban dichotomy by setting a non-universal cut-off point does not usually provide an accurate account of reality. Within the context of the rural–urban continuum, this paper has devised a rurality index for Spanish municipalities based on the 1991 Population, Housing and Household Survey. The index was built on a principal components factor analysis, giving rise to a single factor that is correlated to the aging of the population, economic dependency, farming, livestock or fishing-related employment, habitability of housing and population density. A score to each municipality was allocated. This index can be regularly updated thus enabling the progress of the concept of rurality to be monitored in our setting over time and then compared with other countries using the same methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article compares data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) with time-diary data in the American Time Use Survey (ATUS). The researchers seek to determine whether information from these surveys replicates the findings of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Current Employment Statistics (CES) Survey. The authors are interested in this data because it indicates the potential role of second jobs in economic production. Researchers combine CES data with CPS data to form the basis for economic productivity statistics. The researchers believe that second jobs are overestimated by CPS data.

It has become customary to judge the success of a society through the use of objective indicators, predominantly economic and social ones. Yet in most developed nations, increases in income, education and health have arguably not produced comparable increases in happiness or life satisfaction. While much has been learned from the introduction of subjective measures of global happiness or life satisfaction into surveys, significant recent progress in the development of high-quality subjective measures of personal and social well-being has not been fully exploited. This article describes the development of a set of well-being indicators which were included in Round 3 of the European Social Survey. This Well-being Module seeks to evaluate the success of European countries in promoting the personal and social well-being of their citizens. In addition to providing a better understanding of domain-specific measures, such as those relating to family, work and income, the design of the Well-being Module recognises that advancement in the field requires us to look beyond measures which focus on how people feel (happiness, pleasure, satisfaction) to measures which are more concerned with how well they function. This also shifts the emphasis from relatively transient states of well-being to measures of more sustainable well-being. The ESS Well-being Module represents one of the first systematic attempts to create a set of policy-relevant national well-being accounts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is often argued that indicators of achievement or deprivation should be measured such that they display a property of ‘level-sensitivity’, whereby a given change in the indicator acquires a greater significance the higher (lower) the level of achievement (deprivation) at which the change occurs. In this note, it is shown that a level-sensitive headcount ratio of poverty can be derived from an application of the very useful graphical device called ‘a deprivation profile’ advanced by Anthony Shorrocks (in: Jenkins et al. (eds.) The Distribution of Welfare and Household Production: International Perspectives, 1996). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Index of Violence and Harm (NIVAH) tracks levels of violence and harm in the United States and identifies trends over the study period 1995–2003. NIVAH is comprised of nineteen variables in the areas of interpersonal, intrapersonal, institutional and structural violence and harm as experienced by people in the U.S. Two composite indexes are formed to describe overall trends in the realms of personal and societal violence. In addition to describing the Index’s construction and most recent conclusions, various methodological issues and their impacts on index findings are investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At risk of poverty indicators based on relative income measures suggest that within the enlarged EU societies located at quite different points on a continuum of affluence have similar levels of poverty. Substantial differences in levels of income between societies do not in themselves invalidate this approach. However, the relative income approach fails to capture the fact that, if countries are grouped in terms of level of GDP, between economic cluster differences in life-style deprivation are sharper at lower income levels. Support for the argument relating to restricted reference groups is found in relation to the contrast between the twelve most affluent EU countries and all others. The limitations of relative income poverty lines have little to do with the process of enlargement as such. Instead the major problem involves the weak association between income and deprivation in the more affluent countries. However, as a consequence of such difficulties, such indicators do not provide entirely meaningful comparisons of levels of disadvantage across economic clusters. The current analysis, rather than supporting the alternative of a focus on absolute income or an EU wide poverty line, suggests that we should take the argument for adopting a multidimensional approach to the measurement of poverty more seriously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1999 the complex reform of the old-age pension system was introduced in Poland and the process of changes is still ongoing. The multi-pillar system replaced the pay-as-you-go system. Voluntary third pillar will guarantee higher pensions for those that decide to save more. However, the systemic changes were placed in the new market economy just being implemented in Poland. New economic reality involves serial of processes influencing management of the current budget. On one hand the principles of market economy impose rigorous environment for management of the disposal income while on the other the dynamically developing market of goods, services and modern banking systems create pressure to spend. The evolution of pension system naturally poses questions concerning how the savings and saving behaviour are perceived in the Polish society during economic transformation. The results of survey conducted in the end of 2004 show that the precaution and life cycle motives of saving are observable in the Polish society but restrain seems to be marginal. In addition, attitudes towards saving are varied by some demographic and socio-economic features. These findings confirm statements referring to relation between the growth in material and social standards and acceptance of consumption style of life [i.e. Katona: 1975, Psychological Economics (Elsevier, New York); Lunt and Livingston: 1992, Mass Consumption and Personal Identity (Open University Press, Buckingham)]. Poles with higher social-economic position are rejecting self-restraint shifting towards consumerism. Nevertheless, common opinion of the respondents advocated savings is in contrary with declared avoiding restraint what is in line with other authors describing attitudes towards saving in conflict [Webley and Nyhus: 2001, Everyday representation of the Economy (WUV Universitätsverlag, Wien)]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the estimation of a synthetic economic wellbeing index using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The DEA is a multidimensional technique that has its origins in efficiency analysis, but its usage within the social indicators context is particularly appropriate. It allows the researcher to take advantage of the inherent flexibility of DEA when assigning weights to the factors. The model itself carries out the aggregation and weighting of 8 partial indicators, which attempt to describe the four components of economic wellbeing suggested by Osberg (Royal Commision on the Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada (University of Toronto Press, 1985)), in order to assess the economic wellbeing of the 50 Spanish provinces. By using the index obtained in the analysis a “ranking” of the provinces is obtained. This ranking proves to be relatively similar to the one that corresponds to per capita income, although there are significant differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following several decades of rapid economic expansion, development in Hong Kong has arrived at a new crossroads. The pace of economic growth is no longer as rapid as during earlier decades, competition with other East Asian societies has grown more acute and many of the territory’s recurrent, sometimes hidden, social problems appear to be undermining selected aspects of Hong Kong’s quality of life. And Hong Kong’s political tensions with the central government in Beijing have become more confrontational since its return in 1997 to Chinese political sovereignty. This article: (1) summarizes the current state of social development in Hong Kong; (2) identifies the major social, political and economic challenges that confront Hong Kong at the beginning of a new development decade; (3) compares selected aspects of Hong Kong’s social development with that of other East Asian societies; and (4) suggests a variety of policy options that are available to leaders in Hong Kong’s for promoting a more balanced approach to social and economic development. The article also illustrates the use of social reports and social reporting in advancing development assessment and planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses how the Netherlands Social and Cultural Planning Office's Living Conditions Index (LCI) serves an index of well-being in the Netherlands. LCI's indicators that reflect living conditions in areas influenceable by government policy; Development of a conceptual model linking the LCI to indices of livability, poverty and socioeconomic deprivation.

Reviews the social status of Papua New Guinea in terms of human resource development indicators following its independence in 1975. Factors that contributed to the sluggish growth of its economy; Statistics on the economic and non-economic indicators; Ways to improve the development of their human resource.

Provides a critique of the notion of validity currently used in Economics in terms of its narrowness, imprecision and unsophistication and argues that broadening and deepening the notion of validity would assist in resolving debates about economic phenomena. Emphasis on statistical assessments of validity; Implications for improving the analysis of validity of economic indicators.

Presents information on economic indicators of human satisfaction in regards to purchasing power. Effects of money on human behavior; Reference to the World Commission on Environment and Development (1987) also known as the Brundtland Commission.

Reports on the trade off between economic imperatives and system legitimacy imperatives by East European policy makers. Demand of rapid privatization and marketization; System legitimacy imperatives measures to minimize unemployment; Trade off evaluation of East Germany and Hungary; More.