(01 June 2015) – A new Eurostat publication, “Quality of life in Europe – facts and views”, presents different aspects of personal well-being by combining for the first time objective indicators with subjective evaluations of individuals’ situations in EU Member States.
Traditionally official statistics describe economic and social developments by using indicators such as GDP. However, today it is widely accepted that GDP alone is not enough to show how well or badly people are doing. Quality of life is indeed a broader concept which includes a full range of factors which people value in life and their subjective assessments of these factors.
As people’s life satisfaction cannot be reduced to one single aspect, the publication provides a multidimensional measurement of the quality of life. A ‘quality of life’ framework has been developed and is organised along 8+1 dimensions: material living conditions; productive or main activity (covering employment); health; education; leisure and social interactions; economic and physical safety; governance and basic rights; natural and living environment; and overall life satisfaction.
To complement this publication, Eurostat has developed an infographic that provides information on people’s well-being in a simple way. For each dimension of the quality of life framework, the infographic shows an indicator of people’s subjective evaluation complemented with an objective indicator.