Conceptualizing and Measuring Quality of Life for National Policy

Abstract

The interests in social indicators and social reporting started in the 1960s with the new awareness of poverty in the midst of affluence. In this paper I first discuss the poverty concept and its implication for social policy strategy. The poverty concept should be but one in a system of concepts that throws light on the whole distribution of income and wealth and how income from labor as well as income from capital is generated. The central concepts in the system are income and economic standard, which I explain in different perspectives on command over resources. The command-over-resources concept is used to get from a narrow concept of material welfare that can be measured in money to a wider concept of welfare that includes the universal common social concerns. I confess to being intrigued by the fact that a list of social concerns can be agreed upon that seems to be relevant across cultures, political systems and times. I suggest that this surmised universality springs from the great “life projects” that all humans face over the life cycle. I then discuss the role of social indicators and social reporting as continuous information on these common concerns in the context of an epistemology of the democratic process. Social reporting would serve the democratic process best if it answers “how it is” and leaves the answers on “how it ought to be” and “what should be done” to come about through discussion among citizens.

This paper is based on a lecture that I was invited to give for the opening session of the III Conference of the International Society for Quality of Life Studies, July 20–22, 2000, in Gerona, Spain.