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South Africa has one of the highest inequality levels in the world. In 1993, nearly half of the population were considered poor. These poverty and inequality levels were and still are a legacy of South Africa's colonial and apartheid past. Since the end of apartheid, there has been a strong governmental effort to combat poverty and in this light a 'social indicators movement' has emerged. The aim of this article is to contribute to the South African social indicators research in three ways: Firstly, this article introduces ethnicity as a unit of analysis in the context of poverty and well-being. It is argued that racial categorisations are not justifiable and in the case of South Africa hide valuable insights. The results of an exploratory analysis suggest that ethnicity allows a more insightful analysis of poverty and well-being than race. Secondly, this article introduces a multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) in the context of subjective well-being research. Many studies regarding subjective well-being in South Africa use ordered probit regression models. It is argued here that these models are based on false assumptions and that a MCA can be seen as a suitable alternative since it constitutes an assumption free model. Lastly, the insights gained from the exploratory analysis are discussed. The MCA seems to show that subjective well-being can be regarded as an outcome measure. Furthermore, it is argued that there are cultural differences (between the ethnic groups) regarding subjective well-being. It seems that the ethnic groups in South Africa have different conceptions of well-being and that different factors influence their subjective well-being assessments.

Meeting the Millennium Development Goals will necessarily require a heavy focus on rural areas, where most of the world’s poor are to be found. More specifically, policy will need to raise the productivity of this group, which includes farmers, wage labourers and those suffering from disease and malnutrition. Yet, at present, no index exists which can assess countries on the basis of technological indicators that bear heavily on the productivity of the rural poor. A wide variety of unresolved problems notwithstanding, this paper constitutes the first attempt to construct an index that is designed specifically to assist those who are concerned with rural-specific policies towards meeting the MDGs.

Using panel data from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS), we investigate the possible links between the Russian mortality crisis of the 1990s and social transition that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. The results of the analysis demonstrate that Russians’ life chances and their psychological resources and well-being were deteriorated during the transition in the 1990s. The deterioration of life chances and psychological resources and well-being, in conjunction with the high-risk lifestyle of many Russians, increased their risks of dying both directly and indirectly, through a negative impact on their health.

The paper proposes a simple methodology to estimate an affluence line that depends on the knowledge of the income distribution and the poverty line for a given population. The idea that poverty is morally unacceptable and can be eradicated through redistribution of wealth provides the grounds for the methodology. The line is defined as the value that delimitates the aggregated income required to eradicate poverty by the way of transfers from the rich to the poor. I estimate an affluence line using Brazilian 1999 National Household Survey data and briefly discuss the results.

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has been utilized by academics and policy makers to indicate the economic well-being of the people. However, economic growth measures cannot capture fully the overall well-being of the people. This paper has tested quality of economic growth in Japan after World War II as to whether it has brought about positive outcome in the well-being of its citizens. Comparison between GDP and GPI (Genuine Progress Index) has revealed that GDP does not fit as well with people's life satisfaction trend as GPI. Prefecture-based rankings on GDP, Human Development Index (HDI) and Life Satisfaction have shown that there are clear gaps between objective measures and subjective measures to indicate the overall well-being of the people. Also, analysis on major determinants for people's life satisfaction reveals that older people, women, non-employed people, and those who live in subsidized housings felt satisfied with their life.

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.

Countries throughout the world are trying to move toward a more democratic future through truth and reconciliation processes, under the assumption that truth causes reconciliation and that reconciliation contributes to democratization. But are “truth” and “reconciliation” concepts that can be measured rigorously and reliability? I present evidence in this article that each can be measured as an attribute of individuals, based on a large survey conducted in South Africa. My findings indicate that truth does indeed contribute to reconciliation. But because reconciliation is quite capable of changing (and likely to change) over time, efforts must be made to track levels of reconciliation as an important social indicator. Many countries in transition would profit greatly from implementing a Reconciliation Barometer to measure movement toward or away from the consolidation of democratic reform.

This paper investigates changing attitudes towards the euro over time in Germany using longitudinal micro-data from the German Socio Economic Panel Study. We observe that a large part of the German population was worried about the new currency both before and after its introduction. Social psychological theories provide insight into these attitudes. Concerns regarding the euro are apparently connected with problems in handling the new currency and with the press coverage of price rises. For these reasons, future EMU member states should prepare their populations better for these challenges.

This study assesses well-being differences in Bolivia. We specifically investigate whether ethnicity and regional location explain differences in housing quality, material wealth, sanitation, and educational achievement in Bolivia. We use the 1994 and 1998 DHS surveys of 9114 and 12109 cases, respectively, to test the study hypotheses, which predict that indigenous ethnicity and highland location negatively affect well-being. Results show that in both surveys, indigenous households had lower levels of housing quality, material wealth, and sanitation as compared to non-indigenous households. Indigenous heads of household also showed lower levels of education as compared to non-indigenous heads of household. Households located in the highlands showed lower levels of housing quality and sanitation in both 1994 and 1998. Highland location was a significant predictor of material wealth in the 1998 model but not in the 1994 one. Highland location was not a significant predictor of education in either the 1994 or 1998 models. Rural–urban location had the largest influence on well-being.

The ‘Easterlin paradox’ holds that economic growth does not add to the quality-of-life and that this appears in the fact that average happiness in nations has not risen in the last few decades. The latest trend data show otherwise. Average happiness has increased slightly in rich nations and considerably in the few poor nations for which data are available. Since longevity has also increased, the average number of happy life years has increased at an unprecedented rate since the 1950s.

Do cities have an optimal size? In seeking to answer this question, various theories, including Optimal City Size Theory, the supply-oriented dynamic approach and the city network paradigm, have been forwarded that considered a city’s population size as a determinant of location costs and benefits. However, the generalised growth in wealth that has been experienced over the last 50 years in developed countries has changed what have traditionally been seen as man’s needs. Thus, Inglehart’s post-materialist approach and Maslow’s theory of human needs force us to re-examine the traditional costs and benefits of cities. Here, we assume that costs and benefits enter the utility function of households through the quality of life concept. The relation between the constituents of quality of life and traditional and new theories of city size are considered here. Finally, we test these relations empirically in a specific dynamic, local framework: the city of Barcelona (Spain) in the period 1991–2000.

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.

We review income-happiness research in light of competing theoretical frameworks, unit of analysis, and methodological issues. Within-countries, absolute income is weakly related to happiness, comparison effects depend on the measure utilized, and income change and perceived income produce inconsistent findings. Across countries, absolute income is a stronger predictor of happiness, different comparison effects are significant, income change results are predominantly positive, and the financial-life satisfaction relationship is more robust.

Increasingly national statistical agencies are being called upon to provide high quality data on a regular basis, to be used by governments for evidence-based policy development. Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) give impetus to this, and bring a prerequisite for comprehensive “poverty diagnosis”. Often the data that are required are not available, or are incomplete while the concepts that are to be used may be ambiguous or require adaptation to local conditions. The poverty analysis of Lesotho in this article represents a contribution towards the emerging culture of evidence-based policy-making in developing countries in that it explores changes in key poverty-related social indicators. Techniques for dealing with poor data are discussed and an approach to developing a poverty threshold adapted to the local conditions of Lesotho is described.

Evaluations of regional welfare conventionally rely on Gross Value Added (GVA) per capita as an indicator of well-being. This paper attempts to re-address the regional welfare issue using alternative indicators to per capita income. With this aim, a database for the Spanish regions (NUTS II) has been constructed for the period 1980–2001 and an augmented version of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development Index (HDI) has been estimated incorporating indicators of health, education and per capita income. The results show that, whereas regional income per capita disparities have remained constant, regional convergence in the Augmented Human Development Index (AHDI) was achieved between 1980 and 2001. None the less, there is no evidence of intra-distributional mobility (leap-frogging) across regions in the AHDI

This study presents quantitative, sociological models designed to account for cross-national variation in child mortality. We consider variables linked to five different theoretical perspectives that include the economic modernization, social modernization, political modernization, ecological-evolutionary, and dependency perspectives. The study is based on a cross-lagged effects regression analysis of a sample of 59 developing countries. Our preliminary analysis based on additive models replicates prior studies to the extent that we find that indicators linked to economic and social modernization have beneficial effects on child mortality. We also find support for hypotheses derived from the dependency perspective suggesting that multinational corporate penetration fosters higher levels of child mortality. Subsequent analysis incorporating interaction effects suggest that the level of political democracy conditions the effects of dependency relationships based upon multinational corporations. Transnational economic linkages associated with multinational corporations adversely affect child mortality more strongly at lower levels of democracy than at higher levels of democracy–that is intranational, political factors interact with the international, economic forces to affect child mortality. We conclude with some brief policy recommendations and suggestions for the direction of future research.

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.

The evidence for any relationship between GDP/capita growth and growth in subjective wellbeing (SWB) in wealthier countries is disputed, at best. However, there are a number of reasons commonly articulated for thinking the relationship should be stronger in less developed countries (LDCs). This paper looks at both reasons for expecting the relationship to be stronger in developing countries, and those for a weak link that might still apply in LDCs. Finally, it turns to a limited data set to see what that might tell us. The results suggest that, at least in middle-income countries, there is little strong evidence in favor of a connection between economic growth and SWB.

South Korea is widely known as an Asian model of economic development and democratization. Yet until now, research has not shown whether the country’s successful transition to democracy and market capitalism has enabled ordinary citizens to experience a life of happiness and satisfaction in their private and public lives. To address this question, this study analyzes a 2002 Euromodule survey of the Korean electorate designed to appraise the quality of life as a whole and in its various important domains. Results of the analysis reveal that a substantial minority of South Koreans still leads undesirable lives full of unhappiness and dissatisfaction. Furthermore, among the socioeconomically deprived, more people report deteriorations rather than improvements in their living conditions over the past five years. On the basis of these findings, we conclude that the surging forces of democratization and marketization can hinder ordinary people from experiencing a better quality of life by motivating them to compare themselves with other people in better situations to a greater extent than they did under past circumstances.

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. 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 1994–1996 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. The result of the three ‘bestcases’ study were that the Social-Democratic welfare state performed best on nearly all social and economic indicators that were applied. Looking in this paper on deprivation levels the results are different and it appears that the Social-Democratic welfare state is good in preventing income poverty but performs less well in equalising levels of deprivation. The 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. 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.

This paper uses a household surveyfrom South Africa to estimate a model ofsubjective well-being based upon poverty andhousehold characteristics including housing,sanitation, and transportation. Following Sen,we allow for factors in addition to income andwe begin to incorporate functionings andcapabilities as determinants of well-being. This study finds that important differencesexist among groups based upon their economicstatus. For the poorest quartilestransportation and housing play the mostimportant role in determining well-being, whilefor the richest quartiles, sanitation, water,energy, education and health are relativelymore important. These results have importantpublic policy implications because many of thefactors affecting well-being have large publicgood components. In addition, these resultscould be used to help governments focus aid inorder to improve well-being.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank have been trying to help developing countries speed up economic growth in order to help eradicate poverty. In the last two decades these policies in the Domin- ican Republic have caused rapid and severe changes. Over the last two centuries Dominican culture has faced numerous challenges including a shift from an indi- genous subsistence society in balance with nature to an agrarian-based economy. Now a third wave is impacting the Dominican Republic, based on a rapid shift to a manufacturing and service economy. This current shift has led to repriorit- izing limited national funds for economic infrastructure, at the expense of cuts in public services in such key areas such as education, health, and water. The literature suggests such structural adjustments do not benefit all persons equally. Of specific interest are those left behind who reside in rural places and work in traditional economic sectors especially agriculture. The goal of this study was to compare the well-being of female heads of households (employed and self employed) in agriculture to the male and female heads of households in the other categories of employment in the Dominican Republic (professional or technical manager, service industry, clerical position, sales, skilled laborer, unskilled labor, and agriculture both as an employee and self-employed). The researchers anticip- ated that those households employed in agriculture would have lower well-being scores than those employed in other economic sectors. Of particular concern were female heads of household working in agriculture, because they have been most affected due to gender discrimination, cultural bias, lack of access to land, credit, and training while still being responsible for reproductive labor. The results show that those that are working in agriculture have received very little benefit from the structural adjustments that have been made in the economy compared to other sectors (in terms of the sectors of employment). However, women in this circum- stance seem to be equally bad off as men. The evidence for this hypothesis is far from conclusive. The data may support the fact that the aperture of employment markets such as free trade zones and employment are actually improving the women's placein the society by givingthem morecontrolover their ownfinancial resources. Nonetheless these findings suggest there is a need to invest in agrarian communities because they are an important key in the fight against poverty. In turn this may help to prevent further urban migration, provide food security, and provide a bastion for preserving Dominican culture and heritage.

Where data exist, measures of averagehappiness in industrialized countries typicallyshow little or no upward trend over time,despite substantial growth in real per capitaincomes. This paper examines the existingCanadian data to see if they support thisgeneralization. The Canadian data have someoverall positive trend. Some simple regressionssuggest that per capita real incomes arepositively associated with happiness, whileunemployment and inflation appear to benegatively associated with happiness, a resultalso found in recent studies of Western Europeand the United States. Controlling for thesevariables, a negative time trend emerges.

This paper examines the major features of demographic transition that Korea experienced during the 20th century in association with changing political, economic, and social conditions. The major demographic changes examined include a population explosion, aging, international migration, urbanization, and changes in the family. The social implications of these changes for the 21st century in Korea are also discussed. The demographic trends of North Korea are sketched in order to provide a lead-in for the population situation on the Korean peninsula as a whole.

This study attempts to compare the current state of Korea's quality of life with that of more developed countries in their past, and seeks to derive suggestions for Korea's further development towards a more balanced quality of life. To this end, it analyzes income and five other objective indices of life quality by means of principal components analysis. Korea's real income in 1995 corresponds to the per capita income of many of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (hereinafter the OECD) countries in the late 1960s. Education is the aspect of life in which Korea compares most favorably to the developed countries, approaching the level they experienced in the mid-1980s. In terms of Equity and Work, Korea's current state is much worse than that of the OECD countries in the late 1960s – the years marking the beginning of the time series data used in this study. In light of the OECD countries' past experiences, our analysis clearly indicates that improvements in work conditions and gender equality should be given priority for Korea's further social and economic development.

World Values Survey data, collectedJune-October 1990, are used to exploredeterminants of individual welfare in variousregions of the Soviet Union. Emphasis isplaced on the role of household income andperceived health status in determining thehappiness of an individual. Comparisons aremade across five Soviet regions and between theSoviet Union, the U.S., and West Germany. Thedata indicate similar patterns existedregarding welfare determinants though Sovietcitizens were relatively unhappy. There arealso differences between the two marketeconomies and the Soviet Union regarding theextent to which income influenced health andhappiness.

The present study tests models derived from four theoretical perspectives: Modernization/free trade theory, gender inequality theory, developmental state theory, and dependency theory. It is based on a sample of 82 less developed countries for the period from 1965 to 1991. We find some support for each theoretical perspective. Foreign trade, investment, and debt dependency have adverse effects on infant mortality, mediated by variables linked to modernization/free trade theory and gender inequality theory. State strength has a beneficial direct effect on infant mortality decline. Women's education and reproductive autonomy have significant direct effects, but also play important roles as mediating variables as does rate of economic growth.

The paper focuses on the effect of various forms of parental assistance (i.e.financial support to meet living expenses, purchase of housing, fundingeducation) on living standards (i.e., possession of material goods). Analysisof the data from the Israeli sample reveals a considerable variation amongfamilies with regard to parental support. The data demonstrate that supportis more prevalent among families of high socioeconomic origin (and ofsmaller size) than among families of low socioeconomic origin. Parentalsupport, in turn, significantly affects current standard of living (i.e.number of household goods in possession of the family). That is, familiesthat have benefited from extensive support are more likely to maintainhigher living standards net of social resources and labor market outcomes.The effect of support for education is mediated via labor market outcomes,whereas the impact of support toward purchase of home is direct and netof labor market rewards. The findings revealed by the analysis suggest,rather strongly, that parental transfers not only reproduce but mayactually increase economic inequality across generations. The meaning offindings are discussed in light of theories of social stratification andinequality.

The paper examines the association between variouscrime series for South Africa and their economicdeterminants between 1960 and 1993. The study usesJohansen cointegration techniques to establish theimportance of income per capita (economicopportunities), police officers per capita, convictionrates (both of which proxy for the likelihood ofcriminal success whilst the latter also captures aninstitutional efficiency aspect), and politicalinstability (necessary to reflect the unique SouthAfrican environment during this time) on per capitacrime levels. The results caution previous studiesthat find a close relationship between the level ofeconomic activity and recorded crime. Previous workhas relied on the Engle-Granger technique assuming aunique cointegrating vector. Our results for SouthAfrica indicate that whilst total offences arenegatively associated with income per capita,disaggregated crime series do not always yieldcointegrating vectors. Some conclusions on the policyimplications also follow.

This paper examines the relationship between subjective well-being and domain satisfactions. In the past different models have been specified. The most commonly applied model is the bottom-up model in which domain satisfactions affect subjective well-being. The more recent top-down model suggests a reversed relationship. Finally there is the supposition that the correlations between these variables can be spurious due to the effect of personality characteristics. Empirical research has shown that different models are found for different domains and in different countries. Focussing on the effects of the domain satisfactions of finances, housing and social contacts it has been found that subjective well-being is mainly affected by satisfaction with social contacts in Western developed countries and by satisfaction with finances in East European countries. The question we should like to answer in this study is whether a similar pattern obtains for the factors which influence subjective well-being among the different race groups in South Africa. Interestingly, coloured people and Asians did indeed show the expected effects but the groups with the most extreme living conditions did not. Evaluation of life circumstances by black and white South Africans was determined by expectations for the future rather than by current living conditions. This surprising result is discussed in the light of the political situation in South Africa.

Several studies have been conducted on the topic of well-being. Most of them, however, have been done in industrialized countries where income is distributed relatively more equitatively and the population tends to be more homogeneous. This paper studies the relationship between subjective and economic well-being in Mexico, a country where the economic differences among the population are more clearly marked. According to the economic definition of well-being, higher levels of income are associated with higher levels of well-being through greater levels of material consumption. Taking into consideration this definition, it is worth asking just how important income is for an individual's happiness?Existing studies in psychology have found a positive correlation between economic well-being (socioeconomic status) and subjective well-being (happiness). However, this positive relationship is weak and a large percentage of human happiness remains unexplained. Although the mentioned studies make a good approximation of the existing relationship between income and happiness, the characteristics or specification of the function that generates the relationship between these two variables is often assumed to be linear and positive. The main objective of this paper is to investigate further the relationship between subjective and economic well-being. In this study different specifications and approaches are used to approximate the relationship between these variables. An empirical analysis is made from the results of a survey conducted in two Mexican cities. The investigation studies the impact of demographic, social, and economic variables on subjective well-being in Mexico. Several hypotheses are tested to identify the relationship between household income and individual well-being. It is found that income does not have a strong influence on neither well-being nor on the probability of happiness. However, people tend to overstress the impact that additional income would have on their subjective well-being. This fact could explain the importance that people place on increasing their income level, and it could possibly explain the relative sense of dissatisfaction once a higher income level is achieved. The relationship between income and the sense of basic need satisfaction is also explored. A main assumption in economic theory suggests the existence of a direct relationship between these variables; however, empirical results show this relationship to be extremely weak. Results indicate that subjective well-being is positively related to the sense of basic need satisfaction but not to income.

With EU membership, politicians aswell as citizens in the accession countrieshope to achieve improvements in livingconditions and – at least in the long run –to catch up with the West European societies.Catch-up modernization of the less advancedmember states is also an ``official'' goal of EUpolicy. Expert opinions about the prospects forsuccess, however, vary widely. In this paper, ageneral model for how EU policy influencesquality of life in less well-off membercountries is presented. An analysis of formerenlargements – the cohesion countries Ireland,Greece, Portugal, and Spain – reveals that EUintegration obviously facilitates processes ofcatch up but does not guarantee them. This isdemonstrated by using indicators coveringdifferent aspects of quality of life, percapita income (material living conditions),social protection ratios (general quality ofsociety), and life satisfaction (subjectivewell-being). Bearing in mind their particulareconomic and social conditions and theirheterogeneity, the prospects of the futuremember states are discussed.

A number of governments and public policy institutes have developed ldquoQuality of Life Indexesrdquo – statistics that attempt to measure the quality of life for entire states or regions. We develop 14 criteria for determining the validity and usefulness of such QOL indexes to public policy. We then review 22 of the most-used QOL indexes from around the world. We conclude that many of the indexes are successful in that they are reliable, have established time series measures, and can be disaggregated to study subpopulations. However, many fall short in four areas: (1) indexes vary greatly in their coverage and definitions of domains of QOL, (2) none of the indexes distinguish among the concepts of input, throughput, and output that are used by public policy analysts, (3) they fail to show how QOL outputs are sensitive to public policy inputs, and (4) none have examined convergent validity against each other. We conclude that many of these indexes are potentially very useful for public policy and recommend research to further improve them.

In 1955 Kuznets developed a hypothesis about the relationshipbetween the degree of personal income inequality within a countryand the level of economic development of the country. Thishypothesis suggests that with economic growth, interpersonalincome inequality first increases but after a certain pointstarts to decline. This is known as the inverted-U hypothesis. In1965, Williamson applied this inverted-U hypothesis to the widelyobserved pattern of intra-country regional inequality witheconomic development. This hypothesis was later extended tointer-country inequality in Per Capita Gross National Product(PCGNP) by Ram (1989). The paradigm of development economics hasrecently been shifted from PCGNP to human well-being and it hasbeen broadly accepted that economic growth does not automaticallytranslate into human well-being. The present study is an attemptto extend the application of the inverted-U hypothesis to explainthe relationship between inter-country inequality in socialindicators of development and economic growth.

The study explores the hypothesis of a relationshipbetween colonial heritage and development insub-Saharan Africa. Seventeen countries thatexperienced indirect colonial rule and an equal numberwith a history of direct rule in the region areexamined. Development is defined first, in terms ofhuman development [as per UNDP’s Human DevelopmentIndex (HDI)], and then, as the ability of a country totranslate economic gains into improved livingconditions (defined as the difference between acountry’s real GDP per capita ranking minus its HDIranking). A relationship is found between colonialheritage and human development but not betweencolonial heritage and the ability to translateeconomic gains into improved conditions. It isconcluded that the difference in human conditions ismore a function of inter-country variabilities inindividual and local autonomy than by state actionsspecifically aimed at improving these conditions.

This paper studies the effects of several Quality ofLife (QOL) indicators on the outcomes of nationalelections. We test the hypothesis that declines innational QOL will have a negative effect on the votingsupport for the governing party in the next election. For each election since 1960 in thirteen countries, weuse objective measures of QOL for the previous year toestimate the voting function by using astate-of-the-art technique called Sliced InverseRegression (Li, 1991). These objective measuresinclude GDP per capita, food availability, inflation,crime rates, divorce rate, and percent of females inthe labor force, among others. The estimated “votingfunction” is the best predictor of voters' behavior asa function of the changes in QOL. The results show that changes in economic variablesand food availability significantly affect electionoutcomes. In addition, changes in crime rates werefound to be nearly as important as economic variablesin influencing the election outcomes. This marks thefirst time that a non-economic indicator has beenshown to affect elections. In contrast, measures ofsatisfaction with family life, such as divorce, infantmortality, and percent females in the workforce, showno effect on voting behavior, probably because votersdo not hold their governments responsible for familyaffairs.

The nations of the Middle East have arrived at a historic crossroad.Anchored in centuries-old political and economic systems, bitterethnic rivalries, recurrent intra-regional warfare, and risingfundamentalism, the majority of the region’s countries haveremained largely apart from the transformative processes that areshaping development in other world regions. Indeed, the impressionexists that no development “miracles“ are occurring in theMiddle East and that, to a very great extent, the region isseeking to remain on the “sidelines” of modern history. And,yet, if the countries of the Middle East are to flourish in thenext century they, too, must restructure themselves for dealingwith the complex realities associated with increasing globalizationand internationalization. This paper reports on the socialdevelopment successes and failures of 22 Middle Eastern countriesbetween 1970 and 1997. Also identified are the region’s SocialLeaders (SLs), Socially Least Developing Countries (SLDCs),and Middle Performing Countries (MPCs). The social, political,and economic factors most closely associated with each country’sdevelopment classification are identified.

A crucial debate in policy-making as well as academiccircles is whether there is a trade-off betweeneconomic efficiency and the size/generosity of thewelfare state. One way to contribute to this debate isto compare the performance of ‘best cases’ ofdifferent types of state. Arguably, in the decade1985’94, the US, West Germany and the Netherlands were ‘best cases best economic performers’ in whatEsping-Andersen (1990) calls “the three worlds ofwelfare capitalism”. The US is a liberalwelfare-capitalist state, West Germany a corporatiststate, and the Netherlands is social democratic in itstax-transfer system, although not its labor marketpolicies. These three countries had rates of economicgrowth per capita as high or higher than other richcountries of their `type’, and the lowest rates ofunemployment.

This paper focuses on the gender distribution of poverty in Spain in 1991 and its evolution from 1981 to 1991. For this purpose, we estimate three poverty rates (the head count ratio, the income gap ratio and the per capita income gap ratio) with three poverty lines (50%, 40% and 25% of the mean equivalent income) for Spain in 1981 and 1991. The evolution in the period 1981-1991 has been a general decrease in the poverty rates for the adult population. The gender differences have changed more pronouncedly in the lower end of the income distribution, when the poverty threshold is established at the 25% of the mean equivalent income. With this definition of poverty, women were over-represented amongst the poor in 1981, while in 1991 the situation is just the contrary, with indexes which show a smaller female share among the poor than the male share. The 50% and 40% poverty lines are consistent in 1981 and in 1991 with an almost equally shared poverty between sexes

Against the backdrop of occasional claims by social scientists that class analysis is no longer relevant this article will study the consumption patterns of different classes. Two hypotheses are derived and tested. These are to assume that classes' consumption differences are due to processes of social closure, or are of a cultural kind. This is investigated using a Swedish family expenditure data-set from 1992. The focus is on classes' different uses of their incomes regarding basic expenditures, expenditures on non-durables and ownership of durables. The most striking result is that 'higher' classes tend to spend a great deal of money on ‘activities outside the home’, 'appearance' and ‘information’, while other classes' consumption resembles the 'higher' classes, to different degrees. Moreover, the class hierarchy, constructed theoretically from employment factors, resembles a hierarchy constructed from similarities in patterns of consumption. The main conclusion is that class matters, in interesting ways, for consumption, though there are also other powerful factors. The closure hypothesis receives support, even though a combination of the two hypotheses seems sound.

Why do some countries have a high quality of life? One important explanation is that political democracy fosters life quality. Proponents of this perspective argue that political democracy acts to center the public agenda on state actions that enhance life quality. The cross-national effects of democracy (and several alternative variables) on the physical quality of life were examined for 87 countries at three points in time: 1970, 1980, and 1990. Results indicate the existence of a strong positive relationship between democracy and life quality for all three time periods.

This paper explores the institutional configuration (the three welfare delivery systems: market, welfare state, family) and its distributional correlates (income inequality; poverty rates; inequality related to social cleavages such as social class, generation, gender, region and family). The analysis has a twofold perspective: comparative (comparing 14 EU member states) and longitudinal (comparing Sweden 1975--1995), using nations as statistical units. The European union appears to be divided in three distinct and homogeneous clusters: • a Nordic cluster (Sweden, Denmark, Finland) exhibiting large social expenses, high labour market participation and weak family ties. Its distributional features are low income inequality, poverty rates and class inequality, but high levels of inequality between generations; • a southern cluster (Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal) characterised by lower welfare provisions, low employment, but strong traditional families. Its distributional features are high levels of income inequality, poverty and class inequality, but low levels of generational inequality; • a central European cluster in intermediate position. UK joins the southern cluster with high levels of income inequality, poverty and class inequality.

The paradigm of development in the recent days has been shifted from Per Capita Gross National Product (PCGNP) to Human Well-being. It has also been admitted broadly that PCGNP does not automatically transformed into human well-being. It has thus become common practice to use a range of socio-economic variables for measuring the human Well-being (quality of life) in a country. In order to measure the well-being of about 70 developing countries, this study widens the scope of the Physical Quality of Life Index (PQLI) introduced by Morris, by incorporating a number of social aspects of life. On the basis of these indicators, the achievements in the quality of life of these countries are analyzed in this study. An attempt is also made to compare the decadal improvements in their performances in respect of the quality of life over a period of 1960 to 1990. The study also attempts to analyze the relations between achievements and improvements of quality of life and achievements and improvements in terms of PCRGDP of the countries.

The world is much impressed by the rapid economic development of four Asian Tigers – Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan. However, it has often been taken for granted by many people that their social development is equally satisfactory. In order to investigate whether this belief is true or not, this paper looks at the levels of social development these countries have attained. Various measures of their quality of life will be assessed. Specifically, poverty, income distribution and environmental degradation are discussed. Despite their economic success, this study has found that most tigers are plagued by problems of poverty, increasing income disparities and environmental degradation. Further, social expenditures of these countries have been too limited to eliminate or impact on these problems.

Societal transformation which followed the fall of Communism in Czech Republic has affected many aspects of people's lives. In this paper, we describe the main institutional and structural transformations which induced changes in life-quality after 1989 and sketch thereafter some of the changes themselves. It is mostly the changing living conditions which we cover in the contribution: 1. democracy and civil rights, 2. employment and unemployment, 3. incomes, earnings and the quality of consumption, 4. poverty, 5. housing, 6. environment, 7. health, 8. crime, corruption and social pathology. Some tentative conclusions are proposed: the changes have been contradictory – positive on some dimensions of life-quality (democracy, civil rights, environment, health), negative on another set (crime and social pathology, housing) and inconclusive in the rest (incomes, wages, employment). It is, however, premature to draw definite conclusions, as the process of transformation has not yet reached its end. Judging from subjective evaluation of the overall life quality, the recent picture was encouraging: in 1996, the majority of Czech population said they were satisfied wit how they live. Not only life-quality has changed after 1989, but also the understanding of what good life means.

In this paper the present situation in living standards and demographic trends is discussed. The analysis focuses on the time patterns in Latvia since the end of the 1980s. Aspects considered include economic development employment and unemployment housing conditions marriage and family fertility decline mortality and replacement fertility. (EXCERPT)

The weakening of social integration and anomie are unavoidable in the transformation of societies. The effect is a decrease of quality of life accompanied by disenchantments, aggressiveness and escapism. In some countries in Eastern Europe like Bulgaria the anomie effects of transformation became particularly strong. The major reason is the political instability. The dissolution of the previous state-centered over-integration of society developed into a dissolution of major mechanisms of political integration. The prospects for improvement of quality of life are focused on the balance of economic, political and cultural re-integration of Bulgarian society.

With the historical change of the socio-economic system in ex-communist European countries quality of life of the population changed dramaticaly, improving in some components and within certain social strata and deteriorationg in others. These changes are analysed within the framework of authentic development and quality of life components: economic, social, political, environmental, cultural and human. The major aspect of the changes is the enlargement of human choices in all of the components, and to different extents in different countries in transition. The future of the whole transition process lies in its sustainablity and ability to draw on its past experience as well as on the experience of the Western world.

The European region is undergoing dramatic social change. Among other regional and international forces, these changes are rooted in: the collapse of the former Soviet Union; the sudden appearance of a large number of “new” – mostly poor and politically unstable – European nations; and, the emergence of economic trading blocs in North America and Asia. At the same time, the majority of “established” European nations are experiencing sluggish rates of economic growth, moderate to high levels of inflation, high unemployment, escalating demands on public social services, and low fertility in combination with high rates of population aging and immigration from developing countries. Despite the seriousness of the dilemmas confronting the region, European development accomplishments of the past 25 years suggest that the region's leaders already possesses the resources required to solve its complex, social, political, and economic challenges.