Download Social Quality – Quality of Life

Professor Claire Wallace
Freedom and Necessity: class differences and coping
strategies in times of economic crisis.
Split, Croatia, October 2015
Easterlin paradox: GDP rose but
happiness did not (in USA)
Measuring wellbeing
 Beyond GDP arguments taken up by international bodies
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and national governments (OECD, European Commission,
British, Italian, French, German Governments)
Way of looking at measuring wellbeing rather than wealth,
of happiness rather than misery
Way of taking into account subjective preferences
Co-operation of economists and psychologists – what
about sociologists?
Measurements of success: outputs or inputs?
Measurements of success: index or dashboard?
Qualitative or quantitative?
Problems
 Individualistic approach to wellbeing – fits with neo-liberal agenda and
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therapeutic culture
Improve yourself or take a tablet – happiness industry (Davies 2015)
Social context hinted at but ignored – not theorised.
Experiences of wellbeing and conditions of wellbeing different.
Agenda set by affluent societies
Fits with idea of consumerist modernity (Bauman)
Focus on individual means no longer look at social problems
Normative yardstick for measuring success (Ahmed and Ehrenreich)
Individual approaches vs social
approaches
 Individual Wellbeing
(e.g. Mindfulness,
Positive psychology etc.)
 OR
 Quality of Life
- Conditions that make a good life
possible.
Three approaches to measuring
happiness in surveys
 Hedonic: are you happy?
OR: life satisfaction
 Eudaimonic: leading a flourishing life (virtuous)
 Mental health
(not being miserable)
From happiness to quality of
life
 Quality of life approaches try to go beyond individual happiness to measure a
variety of domains
 Subjective and objective measures used
 Way of informing policies
 Domains can be drilled down to indicators
BUT
 Problem with this approach is that it results in a list of indicators with no
criteria for choosing one or the other
 Generally a-theoretical or theory has been submerged
 Can it include non-European and poorer countries?
Indicators
Quality of Life
approach
(GESIS)
European
Foundation
OECD
Better Life
Oxfam Humankind
Index
ONS
(UK)
BES (Italy)
EUROSTAT
Income/economic wellbeing
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Employment/productive
activity/working conditions
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Housing/local environment
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Household and family
relations/population
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Health
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Work-Life balance
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Education and vocational training
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Social connections/participatoin
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Civic engagement
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Public services/governance
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Environment
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Personal security/crime and public
security
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Subjective wellbeing/evaluation of
life situation
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Transport and mobility
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Leisure and culture
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Tolerance of equalities/tension
between groups
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Landscape and cultural heritage
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Research and innovation
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Dashboard
Index
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Sociological approaches
 Group of scholars developed around “happiness studies” (Cieslik, Bartram,
Hyman, Thin)
 Should see happiness as biographical project
 How people reflect on their lives
 Socially constructed
 Qualitative rather than quantitative
BUT
 Sociological alternatives based on individual interviews – social constructionist
 Need for an approach that looks at the quality of society
The Decent Society – an
approach to societal quality
Economic Security
Social Cohesion
Social Inclusion
Social and Cultural
Empowerment
Socio-Economic Security
 Protection from poverty
 Economic security across the life course
 Having enough to live on appropriate to the society
you live in
 Enabling people to support themselves and lead a
decent life
Social Cohesion
 Glue that holds society together making it more than
just a collection of individuals
 Shared set of expectations – understanding the “rules
of the game”
 Managing diversity and tensions
 Trust in others and in government
 Shared identity and purpose
 Working for the common good
Social inclusion
 Membership of society
 Access to resources and day to day activities
 Involvement in civil society and decision making
 Recognition and responsibility (rights) for all
people
 Able to have voices heard
 Inclusion in neighbourhood, social networks,
families
Social Empowerment
 Having agency – people able to
control own lives and participate
in cultural, economic and social opportunities
 Building capacities for empowering individuals and
communities
 Good health and education
 Enjoying dignity and respect
 Increasing range of opportunities for groups and
people – making voices heard
Social quality more than
quality of lie
 Understanding of collective as well individual dimensions
 Understanding of agency and structure
 Understanding of social integration and system integration
 Understanding of changing social world – mobility, digital communications
etc.
 Understanding of levels of society – family, community, network, national
society, Europe , the world
 Understanding of different positions of structural groups
 Understanding of social in relation to economic/psychological
 Cultural dimensions? Might we find that e.g. Family is more important in
some cultures than others and different meaning what family is?
 How to compare quality of society over time and across nation?
 Point to issues that are relevant for public policy
Ways of applying Societal Quality - post
communism (1)
 We started by looking at the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in 1990s
and early 2000s (Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan)
 Retreat of state, removal of economic security, existential uncertainty, collapse
or retreat of state institutions
 Mass emigration (in Moldova and Georgia) resulted in changed family
relationships (parents-children, men-women)
 Proved a good model of society from which to understand what was going
wrong
 People no longer understood the rules of the game.
 Health consequences also a result of social and system collapse
 Not due so much to life style factors (smoking, drinking and diet) but to sense
of disorientation and dislocation (anomie). No longer understanding the rules
of the game
 Survival strategies on a micro level
Ways of understanding Societal
Quality (2) Improving societies
 Compare improvement in Accession States between 2003 and 2007
 Economic factors less important in 2007 than 2003
 Empowerment more important – feeling able to control life and not
feeling left out
 Social cohesion more important and inclusion still important
Effects of Recession? 20072011
 Life satisfaction in Europe rose on average from 7.0 to
7.1
 Plunging life satisfaction in Greece, Slovenia and
Slovakia
 In other parts of ECE it rose.
 Fell in the Nordic countries (apart from DK)
 Rose in the UK and Ireland
Ways of understanding Societal Quality
(3) European Social Survey 2012
 Offered a far wider range of variables
 Module on wellbeing 2012
 Did not measure against life satisfaction but rather
tried to construct quadrants from range of relevant
domains
 Social quality index
 Predictable results (Norway on the top and Ukraine on
the bottom) but composition of SQ differed –
countries scored higher or lower on different
quadrants
Croatia
Macedonia
Constant
7.208
6.849
Age-young (ref=middle age)
0.308
0.428*
Age-old (ref=middle age)
0.124
-0.181
Rural (re=urban)
-0.186
-0.038
Female (ref=male)
0.212
-0.101
Deprived (re=not deprived)
-0.948**
-1.197**
Inadequate income (ref=adequate income)
-0.781**
-0.422*
Accommodation problems (ref= less than 2 accommodation
problems
-0.689**
-.704**
Trust in institutions high (ref=medium)
0.422
0.021
Trust in institutions low
-0.498**
-0.666**
Quality of health services high (ref=medium)
0.763**
0.451*
Quality of health services low
-0.327*
-0.265
Unemployed (ref= -employed)
-0.582*
-0.960**
Retired (ref=employed)
-0.135
0.421
Other inactive (ref=employed)
0.099
-0.101
Living with others (ref=living alone)
0.298
-0.093
Extensive social contacts (ref=not extensive)
0.313*
-0.117
Expected financial help from family (ref=others or nobody)
0.171
0.399**
Give help: money/food (ref=no help given)
0.213
0.631**
Religious (ref=attended religious service less than 2x per week)
0.222
-0.241
Post secondary and tertiary education
-0.166
0.166
Fair bad or very bad health (ref=good health)
-0.485**
-0.574**
R-squared
0.341
0.318
N
909
863
Socio-Economic Security
Social Cohesion
Social Inclusion
Social Empowerment
Life satisfaction and quality of life in
Croatia and Macedonia(2007)
 Variance explained is high in both countries (34% and 31%)
 Economic security is most important. Not having sufficient
resources lowers life satisfaction dramatically
 Social cohesion: trust in institutions and the quality of
institutions raises life satisfaction
 Social inclusion: unemployment by far the most negative
factor. Otherwise having extensive social contacts in
Croatia and informal social support are important in
Macedonia
 Social Empowerment: good health is important but a high
level of education is not (no subjective empowerment
variables were considered in this analysis)
Ways of understanding Societal Quality
(4) Community wellbeing
 Community wellbeing analysed through fieldwork and research online
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looking at how community projected itself on websites and social
media
Community well being: social networks and associations, sense of
belonging and working for the common good of the community
Four rural communities were studied
Communities can be a place where people build up meaningful
identities
Community wellbeing about bridging divisions within the community
between outsiders and locals, social classes, young and old.
Community depends upon local social enterprise, online and offline
places to meet and communicate, events and festivals bringing people
together, presence of creative middle class, good communications
Conclusions
 Great fashion to use happiness as approach but many critiques
 Need to understand social dimension, social context
 Quality of life approaches an improvement on single indicators of
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happiness and satisfaction
Societal quality approach a development of this
Need to apply this across the world to non-affluent as well as affluent
societies
Need to apply it to community as well as national level.
Qualitative as well as quantitative approaches