MEASURING QUALITY-OF-LIFE - ECONOMIC, SOCIAL, AND SUBJECTIVE INDICATORS

Thinkers have discussed the ''good life'' and the desirable society fo r millennia. In the last decades, scientists offered several alternati ve approaches to defining and measuring quality of life: social indica tors such as health and levels of crime, subjective well-being measure s (assessing people's evaluative reactions to their lives and societie s), and economic indices. These alternative indicators assess three ph ilosophical approaches to well-being that are based, respectively, on normative ideals, subjective experiences, and the ability to select go ods and services that one desires. The strengths and weaknesses of the various approaches are reviewed. It is argued that social indicators and subjective well-being measures are necessary to evaluate a society , and add substantially to the regnant economic indicators that are no w favored by policy makers. Each approach to measuring the quality of life contains information that is not contained in the other measures.