Quality of Life

From a sustainable development point of view, it is the most encompassing and less materialistic quality of life, rather than the limited standard of living, that is, together with environmental sustainability, the right yardstick to use to assess economic activity and social arrangements in general. Indeed, although economic growth is consuming, in absolute terms, more and more scarce environmental resources, there is ample evidence that past a given threshold, it no longer brings real improvement in the quality of life of the population, as measured by different indicators of objective (e.g., life expectancy or education) and subjective (e.g., reported happiness and satisfaction with life) well-being. In contrast, when asked what makes them feel good and happy, people in rich Western societies typically answer, in decreasing ...