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Encyclopedia > Livability

The well-being or quality of life of a population is an important concern in economics and political science. There are many components to well-being. A large part is standard of living, the amount of money and access to goods and services that a person has; these numbers are fairly easily measured. Others like freedom, happiness, art, environmental health, and innovation are far harder to measure. This has created an inevitable imbalance as programs and policies are created to fit the easily available economic numbers while ignoring the other measures, that are very difficult to plan for or assess. Economics (from the Greek οίκος [oikos], house, and νομος [nomos], rule, hence household management) is a social science that studies the production, distribution, trade and consumption of goods and services. ... Political science is a social science discipline that deals with the theory and practice of politics and the description and analysis of political systems and political behavior. ... The Standard of living refers to the quality and quantity of goods and services available to people. ... Freedom - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ... Happiness is often used to describe emotional or affective state in which we feel good or pleasure. ... Winged Victory of Samothrace exihibited in the Louvre. ... The Natural Environment comprises all living and non-living things that occur naturally on Earth. ...


Debate on quality of life is millennia-old, with Aristotle giving it much thought in his Nicomachean Ethics and eventually settling on the notion of eudaimonia, a Greek term often translated as happiness, as central. The neologism liveability (commonly but less correctly livability), from the adjective liveable, is an abstract noun now often applied to the built environment or a town or city, meaning its overall contribution to the quality of life of inhabitants. Aristotle (Ancient Greek: Aristotelēs 384 BC – March 7, 322 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher, student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. ... Nicomachean Ethics (sometimes spelled Nichomachean), is a work by Aristotle on virtue and character and plays a prominent role in defining Aristotelian ethics. ... Eudaimonia (Greek: ) is a classical Greek word commonly translated as happiness. Etymologically, it consists of the word eu (good or well being) and daimōn (a spirit or minor deity) and literally means having a good guardian spirit. Unlike the word happiness, eudaimonia rarely describes a state of mind and... Greek (Greek Ελληνικά, IPA — Hellenic) is an Indo-European language with a documented history of 3,500 years. ... Translation is an activity comprising the interpretation of the meaning of a text in one language — the source text — and the production, in another language, of a new, equivalent text — the target text, or translation. ... Happiness is often used to describe emotional or affective state in which we feel good or pleasure. ...


Understanding quality of life is today particularly important in health care, where monetary measures do not readily apply. Decisions on what research or treatments to invest the most in are closely related to their effect of a patient's quality of life. Health care or healthcare is the prevention, treatment, and management of illness and the preservation of mental and physical well-being through the services offered by the medical, nursing, and allied health professions [1]. The healthcare industry is one of the worlds largest and fastest-growing industries, consuming over...


Quality of Life also refers to the first White House regulatory review program started in the Nixon Administration.

Contents


Measuring quality of life

The measures often used in the study of health care are 'quality-adjusted life years' (QALYs) and the related 'disability-adjusted life years' (DALYs); both equal 1 for each year of full-health life, and less than 1 for various degrees of illness or disability. Thus the cost-effectiveness of a treatment can be assessed by the cost per QALY or DALY it produces; for example, a cancer treatment which costs $10,000 and on average gives the patient 2 extra years of full health costs $5000 per QALY. Assessing treatments in this way avoids the much greater problems associated with putting a monetary value on life, as required in other areas of economics; saying that a treatment costs $5000 per QALY (i.e. per year of life) does not say or assume anything about the monetary value of a year of life. Quality-adjusted life years, or QALYs, are a measure of the benefit of a medical intervention. ... FUCKING BULLSHIT!! The value of life is an economic or moral value assigned to life in general, or to specific living organisms. ...


Another method of measuring quality of life is by subtracting the "standard of living", according to the technical definition of the term. For example, people in rural areas and small towns are generally reluctant to move to cities, even if it would mean a substantial increase in their standard of living. One can thus see that the quality of life of living in a rural area is of enough value to offset a higher standard of living. Similarly people must be paid more to accept jobs that will lower their quality of life, night jobs, ones with extensive travel all pay more and the difference in salaries can also give a measure of the value of quality of life.


There is a growing field of research concerned with developing, evaluating and applying quality of life measures within health related research (eg within randomised controlled trials). Many of these focus on the measurement of health related quality of life (HRQoL), rather than a more global conceptualisation of quality of life. They also focus on measuring HRQoL from the perspective of the patient and thus take the form of self completed questionnaires. The International Society for Quality of Life was founded in response to this research and is a useful source of information on this topic.


A number of groups and agencies around the world have tried to develop ways of assessing quality of life:

The Economist is a weekly news and international affairs publication of The Economist Newspaper Limited in London. ... The Vanderford-Riley well-being schedule is a measure of well-being used by some economists. ... The physical quality-of-life index (PQLI) is an attempt to measure the quality of life or well-being of a country. ... The UN Human Development Index (HDI) measures poverty, literacy, education, life expectancy, and other factors. ... The Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) is a concept in green economics and welfare economics that has been suggested as a replacement metric for gross domestic product (GDP) as a metric of economic growth. ... Gross National Happiness (GNH) is an attempt to define a standard of living in more holistic and psychological terms than Gross National Product. ...

Application in politics

New Zealand

The Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand uses Quality of life as a slogan. Current Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand logo The Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand is a political party in the New Zealand parliament. ...


North America

The term has often been used, since the 1980s and esp. 1990s, in connection with the presence or absence of so-called victimless crimes, its users in this sense citing the incidence of these to gauge the inherent level of disorder in a society at a particular time. Users of the term in this application — who tend to be political and/or social conservatives — often refer to victimless crimes by the alternate name of "quality-of-life crimes." In conjunction with this, American sociologist James Q. Wilson has articulated what he calls the Broken Window Theory, which asserts that relatively minor problems left unattended (such as public urination by homeless individuals) send a subliminal message that disorder in general is being tolerated, and as a result, more serious crimes as well end up being committed (the analogy being that a broken window left unrepaired exudes an image of general dilapidation). Wilson's theories have been expounded by many prominent American mayors, most notably Oscar Goodman in Las Vegas, Richard Riordan in Los Angeles, Rudolph Giuliani in New York City and Gavin Newsom in San Francisco. Their cities have instituted so-called zero tolerance policies, i.e. that do not tolerate even minor crimes. The 1980s decade refers to the years from 1980 to 1989, inclusive. ... The 1990s decade refers to the years from 1990 to 1999, inclusive. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Consensual crime. ... Conservatism or political conservatism is any of several historically related political philosophies or political ideologies. ... Sociology is the study of the social lives of humans, groups and societies. ... James Q. Wilson (born May 27, 1931) is the Ronald Reagan professor of public policy at Pepperdine University in California, and a professor emeritus at UCLA. He has a Ph. ... A homeless man pushes a cart down the street. ... A mayor (from the Latin maÄ«or, meaning larger,greater) is the politician who serves as chief executive official of some types of municipalities. ... Portrait of Las Vegas, Nevada Mayor Oscar B. Goodman. ... This article is about the city of Las Vegas in Nevada. ... Richard J. Riordan Richard J. Riordan (born May 1, 1930) is a Republican politician from California, who had served as the California Secretary for Education from 2003–2005 and as Mayor of Los Angeles from 1993–2001. ... This article is about the largest city in California. ... Rudolph William Louis Rudy Giuliani III, KBE (born May 28, 1944) served as the Mayor of New York City from January 1, 1994 through December 31, 2001. ... Nickname: The Big Apple Motto: Official website: City of New York Location [[Image:|250px|250px|Location of City of New York, New York]] Location in the state of New York Government Counties (Boroughs) Bronx (The Bronx) New York (Manhattan) Queens (Queens) Kings (Brooklyn) Richmond (Staten Island) Mayor Michael Bloomberg (R... Mayor Newsom Gavin Christopher Newsom (born October 10, 1967) is the 42nd Mayor of San Francisco, California. ... This page is a candidate for speedy deletion. ... Zero tolerance is a strict approach to rule enforcement. ...


One attempt to take quality of life more into account in government decisions is the notion of a seventh generation standard, which argues that the effect of any decision today should be judged by its effect in six generations. These measures are often associated in the United States with the proposed Seventh Generation Amendment proposal to the U.S. Constitution, and in Canada with the Canada Well-Being Measurement Act co-authored by Mike Nickerson of the Green Party of Ontario and Joe Jordan, a Liberal Party of Canada Member of Parliament. This strategy still would be very difficult to implement as predicting the future is never easy. Decision makers seven generations ago in the early mid-nineteenth century would have great difficulty comprehending today's realities. The seventh generation standard is a concept that originates from indigenous North Americans who believed that the decisions of today should take into account the well being of the next seven generations. ... Page I of the Constitution of the United States of America Page II of the United States Constitution Page III of the United States Constitution Page IV of the United States Constitution The Syng inkstand, with which the Constitution was signed The Constitution of the United States is the supreme... Canada Well-Being Measures Act was a measure proposed by Member of Parliament Marlene Jennings in 2001. ... The Green Party of Canada is intending to run a full slate of 308 candidates in the 2006 Canadian federal election. ... The Green Party of Ontario (GPO) contests provincial elections in Ontario, Canada. ... Joe Louis Jordan (born November 19, 1958 in Pembroke, Ontario) is a Canadian politician. ... The Liberal Party of Canada (French: Parti libéral du Canada), colloquially known as the Grits (originally Clear Grits), is a Canadian federal political party positioned around the centre of the political spectrum, combining a generally progressive social policy with moderate economics. ... A Member of Parliament, or MP, is a representative elected by the voters of an electoral district to a parliament; in the Westminster system, specifically to the lower house. ...


Several First Nations in both Canada and U.S. seem to have independently originated this standard, prior to European contact, which seems to represent the age ratio between the longest-lived elders and newborns expressed in terms of generations, i.e. humans live at most 100-115 years, and reproduce in most tribal cultures at about 15-17 years old, a ratio of about seven to one. So, according to the standard, any child born as a decision was being made would be able to assess its impact over their entire life as an elder. Carved mask in Vancouver First Nations is a term for ethnicity used in Canada to replace the word Indian. It refers to the Indigenous peoples of North America located in what is now Canada, and their descendants, who are not Inuit or Métis. ...


Although laws to require standards for measuring well-being have not yet been adopted, they are growing in popularity in the labor movement, forced attention to these matters to the NAFTA level and have begun to challenge assumptions of economics regarding inflation and money supply. The labor movement (or labour movement) is a broad term for the development of a collective organization of working people, to campaign in their own interest for better treatment from their employers and political governments. ... Nafta or NAFTA may refer to the fact that Greg Mundy likes large objects in his ass, or: an acronym for the North American Free Trade Agreement an acronym for the New Zealand Australia Free Trade Agreement the town/oasis of Nafta, Tunisia This is a disambiguation page: a list... Economics (from the Greek οίκος [oikos], house, and νομος [nomos], rule, hence household management) is a social science that studies the production, distribution, trade and consumption of goods and services. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards and appeal to a wider international audience, this article may require cleanup. ...


Early negotiations on NAFTA adopting the U.S. dollar (i.e. in both Canada and Mexico) have been drastically complicated by proposals to agree, as a prerequisite, on measuring well-being, which is still a very new subject. In part to stall or block currency union, the Canadian Labour Congress, Green Party of the United States, Green Party of Ontario and Green Party of Canada have all backed well-being measures very strongly. However, there is broad agreement among green economists that a common standard for measuring well-being, and possibly also Bioregional Democracy measures, would be required in order to ensure biosecurity after a currency union. In economics, a monetary union is a situation where several countries have agreed to share a single currency among them, for example, the East Caribbean Dollar. ... The Canadian Labour Congress, or CLC (in French le Congrès du travail du Canada or CTC) is the central labour body in Canada to which most Canadian labor unions are affiliated. ... In American politics, the Green Party is a third party which has been active in some areas since the 1980s, but first gained widespread public attention for Ralph Naders presidential runs in 1996 and 2000. ... The Green Party of Ontario (GPO) contests provincial elections in Ontario, Canada. ... The Green Party of Canada is a federal political party in Canada. ... Green economics loosely defines a theory of economics by which an economy is considered to be component of the ecosystem in which it resides. ... Bioregional democracy (or the Bioregional State) is a set of electoral reforms designed to force the political process in a democracy to better represent concerns about the economy, the body, and environmental concerns (e. ... A biosecurity guarantee attempts to ensure that ecologies sustaining either people or animals are maintained. ...


See also

The overall objectives in the field of Civil Protection are to ensure better protection of people, the environment, property and cultural heritage in the event of major natural and technological disasters, including accidental marine pollution, chemical spills. ... Copenhagen Consensus is a Danish project which seeks to establish priorities for advancing global welfare using methodologies based on the theory of welfare economics. ... ECONOMICS IS COOL CLASS NOTTY-D MASSIVE The most common approach to measuring and understanding GDP is the expenditure method: GDP = consumption + investment + exports − imports Consumption and investment in this equation are the expenditure on final goods and services. ... Simple living (similar but not identical to voluntary simplicity or voluntary poverty) is a lifestyle individuals may pursue for a variety of motivations, such as spirituality, health, or ecology. ... For specific national programs, see Social Security (United States), National insurance (UK), Social Security (Sweden) Social security primarily refers to a field of social welfare concerned with social protection, or protection against socially recognized conditions, including poverty, old age, disability, unemployment, families with children and others. ... Auxology is a meta-term covering the study of all aspects of human physical growth; though it is also a fundamental of biology generally. ...

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