(21 March 2014) – What is quality of life and how can its different aspects be measured appropriately? This question may be answered by a new online publication on Quality of life indicators released by Eurostat.
With the following quality of life measures, Eurostat wants to complement the one indicator, GDP, traditionally used for measuring economic and often social, development: median income in PPS, income quintile share ratio (S80/S20); long term unemployment, life expectancy, early school leavers, share of population unable to afford unexpected expenses, homicide rate, gender pay gap, PM10 exposure and life satisfaction.
In 2011, EU countries with the highest life satisfaction index were Denmark (8.4), Finland (8.1) and Sweden (8.0). The “least happy” countries were Bulgaria (5.5), Greece and Latvia (6.2), and Estonia (6.3)..