The relationship between quality of life and standard of living.
The patterns outlined on the scatter graphs show that there are
huge issues that the world needs to deal with in terms of standard of
living and quality of life. Indeed, income variations across the world
can have huge impacts upon the quality of life a person has. There are a
massive range of things that are directly impacted by a person or a
countries ability to pay for them. These things include access to clean
water, education, access to health care, access to medicines, adequate
shelter, security, electricity and many more.
n
The term
quality of life
is used to evaluate the general well-being of individuals and
societies. It is a qualitative measure in that it is not easily measured
and many of the factors affecting it are tied in with the United Nations
Universal human rights such as the right to freedom, the right to marry
and freedom from discrimination.
None of these things are ECONOMIC. Standard
indicators of the quality of life include not only wealth and
employment, but also the built environment, physical and mental health,
education, recreation and leisure time, and social belonging
n
In contrast,
standard of living
is based primarily on income and what that level of income will
allow a person to buy in the way of necessities and luxury goods.
Standard of living refers to the level of wealth, comfort, material
goods and necessities available to a certain group of people in a
certain geographic area. Don’t forget that the standard of living will
vary greatly from country to country and what one level of wealth can
buy in one country will not necessarily buy in another.
For example, you can buy far more with your
money, and live comfortably for longer in India than the same amount of
money would allow in the UK.
Ideally
both measures should be used when judging if a person is comfortably off
or not.
A new measure has been developed in the 1980s that is
also helpful, the Physical Quality of Life Index (PQLI). The PQLI is an
average of 3 social indicators: literacy rates, infant mortality and
life expectancy.
One more thing to consider is
the
different
perceptions/views of acceptable quality of life in different
parts of the world.
What may be totally unacceptable in richer
nations such as living in shanty towns might be the norm in poorer
nations. Imagine
people living in shanty towns in Mumbai, those that have been improved
and stabilized over the years might offer a reasonable quality of life
compared to the pavement dwellers of that city, but would be totally
unacceptable for most Western people to consider living in!
There
can also be big gaps in countries in terms of standard of Living and
Quality of life. In the
UNDP Human Development Report (HDR) of 2005 only 9 countries (4% of the
world's population) have reduced the wealth gap between rich and poor,
whilst 80% of the world’s population recorded an increase in wealth
inequality. The report states that 'the
richest 50 individuals in the world have a combined income greater than
that of the poorest 416 million. The 2.5 billion people living on less
than $2 a day 40% of the world’s population receive only 5% of global
income, while 54% of global income goes to the richest 10% of the
world’s population.'(From
Share the World's Resources)
An inequality is basically an imbalance between people or places. There
are local inequalities and there are inequalities at a global level.
Some people have the ability to buy bottled water; others have to drink
dirty water that is potentially unsafe. Some people drive a car to work
and some have only ever walked. One way of showing an inequality is to
take the average income of the poorest 20% of a country's population
compared to the richest 20%. We can use this information to calculate a
ratio showing how great the inequality is in a country. The greater the
ratio, the bigger the inequality and the richer the top 20% in a country
compared to the bottom 20%. |
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Think about it |
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Coolgeography.co.uk by Rob Gamesby is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License. |