When Jordan Pearson arrived at UCLA from New Zealand at the
beginning of winter quarter, he noticed a lot of homeless people on
the streets of Westwood. Being unaccustomed to such visible
poverty, he began thinking that New Zealand was a better place to
live.
Laura Ceron, an Italian student who previously spent six months
in San Francisco, said she was concerned about the consumerism and
insufficient recycling programs in the United States. But with
political instability in Italy and economic problems caused in that
country by the euro, she said quality of life in the United States
is probably better.
Different cultural, social and economic circumstances make the
quality of life different in different countries, and it is
sometimes difficult to compare lifestyles as better or worse.
Both Pearson, who is beginning a six-month history program, and
Ceron, who is four months into a six-month language program,
acknowledge that their ideas about quality of life are personal,
subjective and based on their limited experience in the United
States.
Deciding what makes a good life and what makes a better one is
tough, but organizations like the United Nations and The Economist
magazine have tried.
The United Nations approaches quality of life in its annual
Human Development Report. The report includes a 112-page Human
Development Index that uses 33 different indicators to discuss
progress toward goals, such as giving people more choices,
improving their ability to lead a long and healthy life, and
achieving equality for all men and women.
The first and most general table is the human development index.
Using data from 2002, the 2004 report ranks 177 countries, with
Norway at the top and Sierra Leone at the bottom, based on
longevity, standard of living and knowledge.
It is a strictly statistical table: Longevity is based on life
expectancy at birth; knowledge is based on the adult literacy rate
and the percentage of children enrolled in schools; and standard of
living is based on Gross Domestic Product per person.
The United Nations’ HDI is constructed to be as objective
as possible, but when the United Nations created the first index 15
years ago, it was considered radical, said William Orme, spokesman
for the United Nations Development Program.
Orme said before the HDI, institutions such as the World Bank
used completely economic indicators, including GDP per person, to
talk about quality of life.
“Now it is quite well accepted that these economic
indicators are important, but they alone don’t give you an
accurate picture of quality of life,” he said.
Orme added that as a “definitive source for the
world,” the United Nations has to stick to verifiable data,
but a magazine like The Economist has more freedom.
In its 2005 projection of world quality of life, The Economist
presents a more personal and varied index.
The Economist’s “intelligence unit” began with
personal life satisfaction surveys (gathered in 1999-2000 for 74
countries), and used them to choose and assign weight to nine
factors of quality of life: material well-being, health, political
stability and security, family life, community life, climate and
geography, job security, political freedom and gender equality.
These factors make The Economist’s index, which places
Ireland at the top and Zimbabwe at the bottom, a mixed product of
human and statistical data. It has more human input than the United
Nations’ HDI, but some of the factors are based on hard
statistics and others could be called arbitrary. For example,
material well-being is based on GDP per person while family life is
based on divorce rate.
But the question remains as to whether these amalgamations,
averages and projections reflect the reality of peoples’
quality of life.
Orme highlighted this concern, saying that peoples’
attitudes toward their lives can be influenced by cultural or
historical factors that have little to do with “objective
socioeconomic indicators.”
“Pick any country with a history of armed conflict for a
number of years, and they are likely to be more wary of their
future than other countries ““ even if they have identical
levels of economic and educational achievement,” he said.
Comparing life in different places is a difficult task, but
during one evening in the dining hall of the UCLA Cooperative
Housing Association, several UCLA international students gave it
their best shot.
Like Pearson and Ceron, most had their own opinions about what
indicates quality of life.
Luke Kelly, an Australian student who is halfway through an
eight-month sociology and political science program, said he was
scandalized by the rural poverty he saw as he traveled through the
southern United States.
He said the Australian government takes a more direct role in
combating issues such as poverty, which for him indicated a higher
quality of life. The United Nations’ index placed Australia
third and the United States eighth, and The Economist’s index
put them at sixth and 13th, respectively.
Many of the students, such as Kathleen Reinhardt, a student from
Germany who has completed four months of a seven-month African
American studies program, said the higher levels of recycling and
socialized health care in Europe made quality of life better
there.
“Here, when you are really sick, you are in
trouble,” Reinhardt said, criticizing the state of socialized
health care in the United States. “I would be scared to live
here.”
While some opinions supported the country ratings suggested by
the United Nations and The Economist and some conflicted with them,
the different views all provided context that helped to interpret
the data, which sometimes varied widely between the two
indexes.
Belen Vicens, a Spanish student who has been studying
international relations at UCLA for four months as part of a
six-month program, had a possible explanation for Spain’s
jump from 20th on the data-heavy U.N. index to 10th on the more
humanistic one from The Economist.
“We are proud of our lifestyle; we are easy-going, and we
enjoy our time,” Vicens said. “Spaniards live happily,
no worries.”
Willem Cleven, a student from the Netherlands who is studying
political science at UCLA during the winter and spring quarters,
suggested that the subjectivity of The Economist’s index as
compared to the United Nations’ might explain the
Netherlands’ slide in the opposite direction ““ from
fifth on the U.N. index to 16th on The Economist’s.
“Recently, there are a lot of feelings of unsafety in
Holland; people feel like something is amiss,” he said,
suggesting these feelings of insecurity might stem from high
immigration and several high-profile political killings. Those
events in conjunction with the weather might have pulled his
country to a lower spot on the more subjective list.
Personal opinions and experiences can help give context to the
complicated assumptions and analyses in quality of live surveys,
but as Ceron says, averages can be deceiving.
“The quality of life is higher here. … But I’m not
sure I like it more than Italy because I’m not sure I like
the consequences of it,” she said. “It is not good for
everyone, just for a few.”