Social Indicators Research

Boelhouwer, J.; Bijl, R.

doi: 10.1007/s11205-015-1132-1pmid: N/A

Attention for quality of life today is if anything more widespread than ever: it is not just scientists who take an interest, but politicians and policymakers, too. This not only led to increased attention for quality of life in a number of countries, but also to more and renewed attention from supranational organisations such as the OECD and Eurostat. In many cases, this attention led to the new or renewed gathering and analysis of data in the form of social monitors or monitoring systems. Much of the power of social monitors and the social indicators of which they are comprised lies in repetition. The longer the time series, the greater the insight into processes that may potentially play a role. For example: which developments go hand in hand with economic growth and which do not, or to a much lesser extent? But there are also downsides to having a long time series, some of which are substantive, others are methodological. This special issue of Social Indicator Research aims at sharing experiences in relation both to the outcomes of long-term research and to dealing with the methodological challenges.

Veenhoven, Ruut

doi: 10.1007/s11205-015-1128-xpmid: 28163348

In the eighteenth century ‘Enlightened’ thinkers challenged the belief that happiness exists only in Heaven. They claimed that happiness is possible in earthly life and foresaw that greater happiness would be achieved using reason. Did this promise of greater happiness come true? Several scholars doubt that we have become any happier and some claim that happiness has declined. These critical claims are tested using the time trend data available in the World Database of Happiness, which cover the period 1950–2010 and involve 1531 data points in 67 nations yielding 199 time-series ranging for 10 to more than 40 years. The analysis reveals that happiness has risen in most nations. The average yearly rise in the 67 nations was +0.012 on scale 0–10, which equals a rise of one full point every 83 years. At this rate happiness must have improved by more than two points over the past two centuries and, together with increasing longevity, this denotes an unprecedented rise in happy life years.

Zuzanek, Jiri

doi: 10.1007/s11205-015-1133-0pmid: N/A

Canadian time use trends of the past 30 years are examined, using General Social Survey data collected by Statistics Canada in 1981, 1986, 1992, 1998, 2005, and 2010. The article analyses changes in the allocation of time to paid work, domestic work, personal needs, and free time, as well as accompanying changes in perceived time pressure and subjective well-being. The article addresses four questions: (1) Do objectively measured time use trends support optimistic forecasts of the 1960s that transition to post-industrial societies is accompanied by substantial gains of free time? (2) Did the time use changes of the past 30 years affect different population and lifecycle groups evenly or asymmetrically? (3) Is there an accord or discord between the objective measures of time use and subjective feelings of time pressure? (4) What are the emotional, and socio-political implications of the observed time use trends?

Møller, Valerie; Roberts, Benjamin

doi: 10.1007/s11205-015-1131-2pmid: N/A

Fifty years have elapsed since Cantril (1965) published his work on The Pattern of Human Concerns. His line of inquiry has stood the test of time. In late 2012, the nationally representative South African Social Attitudes Survey replicated Cantril’s 1960s questions and methodology to elicit South Africans’ hopes and aspirations and worries and fears for self and country and their ratings of where self and country stood—past, present and will stand in future. Although Cantril’s ‘ladder-of life’ scale is still regularly used as a measure of subjective well-being, to our knowledge his full line of preliminary questioning has not been fielded again to date. Our study found that South African aspirations for self were mainly material ones for a decent standard of living and the means to achieve this goal. Hopes for the nation concentrated on economic and political progress to consolidate South Africa’s democracy. A large number of personal and national hopes were mirrored in fears that these aspirations might not be met. Cantril’s method also allowed us to review the main concerns and ratings across the diverse groups of citizens that make up the ‘rainbow nation’. There was a substantial degree of consensus on top hopes and fears but levels of standing on the Cantril ladder of life were still graded according to apartheidera inequalities with black South Africans scoring lower than other race groups. Nonetheless, the majority of South Africans rated their present life better than 5 years ago and projected life to get better in future. Such optimism may place considerable pressure on the state to deliver on personal and societal hopes as the country enters its third decade of democracy.

Everatt, David

doi: 10.1007/s11205-015-1127-ypmid: N/A

The core challenge facing South Africa after it became a democracy in 1994 was twofold: to meet the basic needs of (black) people denied these by apartheid, and simultaneously restoring dignity and undoing the psycho-social damage of racist white rule. This article analyses the first two in a planned long-term sequence of quality of life surveys in the Gauteng City-Region, the economic power-house of South Africa, with Johannesburg at its centre. The survey gathers data across multiple objective and subjective indicators. The key challenge is to try and understand the interplay between the two—and thus what impact, if any, meeting basic needs has on the psycho-social profile of residents of the city-region. The conclusion is that the impact is limited: objective indicators, which largely measure delivery of goods and services by government, drives the quality of life index up; but social, community and individuated indicators (such as anomie and alienation) pull scores down, and most particularly so for older, low educated black South Africans. The future may look positive for those born after apartheid; but for those who sacrificed their education in the struggle to topple the regime, the future looks like ‘more of the same’. Education emerges as the key asset that allows black South Africans to overcome the damage of apartheid; lack of (or low levels of) education do the reverse; this is true of both socio-economic advancement and social attitudes.

Bartolini, Stefano; Mikucka, Małgorzata; Sarracino, Francesco

doi: 10.1007/s11205-015-1130-3pmid: N/A

Trends of subjective well-being (SWB) in transition countries are peculiar: they show substantial changes that are more strongly correlated with the trends of GDP than in other developed countries. This paper examines the role of the trends of GDP and of social trust in predicting the trends of well-being. We find that the strength of the relationship between social trust and SWB over the medium-term is comparable to that of GDP. We conclude that in the medium-term, even in countries where material concerns strongly affect well-being, social trust is a powerful predictor of the trends of SWB. However, in the short run the relationship between social trust and SWB does not hold and GDP stands out as the only significant correlate of SWB.

Callens, Marc

doi: 10.1007/s11205-015-1134-zpmid: N/A

In this paper we focus on temporal heterogeneity of overall life satisfaction. Using repeated Eurobarometer Surveys from the period 1973–2012 and multilevel hierarchical age period cohort regression, trend, life-cycle and cohort effects are disentangled. In Flanders, the trend fluctuations are stronger than the life-cycle effects and there are hardly any generation effects. In other countries, by contrast, there are few or no trend fluctuations, but rather signs of a generational change. The international heterogeneity is particularly large and these international differences are stronger than the temporal ones. It remains unclear what factors from the macro-context lie at the basis of the observed international differences.

Boelhouwer, Jeroen

doi: 10.1007/s11205-015-1122-3pmid: N/A

For more than 40 years the Netherlands Institute for Social Research|SCP has studied the quality of life of the Dutch population. A characteristic element of that research is the use of time series. However, maintaining a time series over such a long period is not easy. All manner of problems arise, such as indicators no longer being relevant (who still has a black and white television?) or the changing importance that is attached to particular topics (sport is more important today than it was in 1974). The method of data collection can also change. In this article we take the perspective of a specific measurement to look at the changes that have taken place over the last 40 years and how those changes have been accommodated. We do this using the SCP Life Situation Index, which measures the objective quality of life of Dutch citizens. The conclusion is that it is possible to construct a long-term time series, but that it is not always possible to interpret changes from year to year: the perspective has to focus primarily on long-term developments.

Self, Abigail

doi: 10.1007/s11205-015-1140-1pmid: N/A

This paper outlines the Office for National Statistics’ approach to measuring quality of life and its application to UK policy. It focuses on the value of stakeholder engagement and presentation for embedding concepts and fostering legitimacy for outputs and provides examples of how quality of life is starting to be used within UK policy.

Maggino, Filomena; Facioni, Carolina

doi: 10.1007/s11205-015-1129-9pmid: N/A

The aim of the paper is to show how the variety of approaches to study social change may result in a challenging complexity for the social scientist, starting from the difficulty of defining the concept of “change” itself and managing it through observed data. This is particularly true in presence of complex phenomena, such as those defining and composing the quality of life. What should be pointed out is that quality of life studies not only are focused on the present time but have also long term perspectives. This represents the link between studies on quality of life and forecasting. When applied to the field of quality of life, the typical logical approach to forecasts, based upon inferential statistics, could reveal its limits. Those limits are related to different aspects: e.g., the forms of relationships between different aspects of the phenomenon, which can be linear and non-linear; the dimensionality of phenomenon, which can turn out to be very complex; the causality, which could be direct or indirect; the entity of change, which implies the idea that also small change can have great impact; the perspective of observation, which can be internal or external and local or global. Consequently, the study of change related to quality of life needs, in addition to the traditional statistical tools as well as the tradition of social indicators, a different approach. Although the Futures Studies are not a proper science, nevertheless their approach to social research may ensure the requested accuracy of a scientific forecasting process.