Construction and Analysis of a Composite Quality of Life Index for a Region of South Africa

Talita Greyling () and Fiona Tregenna

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, 2017, vol. 131, issue 3, No 2, 887-930

Abstract: Abstract This study quantifies and analyses quality of life in the Gauteng City-Region of South Africa. First we adapt and extend a method used in research on market regulations to construct composite indices to the field of quality of life. In the adapted method we employ categorical principal components analysis suitable for the analysis of categorical data typically used in quality of life research. The newly constructed index is a comprehensive quality of life index, which includes objective and subjective as well as economic and non-economic indicators. This is the first composite index of its kind in South Africa. Second, this index is used to compare the quality of life of different demographic and socio-economic groups in the region. The quality of life scores of Africans, low income, female, older and urban informal dwellers are relatively low. Third, the explained variance of the dimensions of quality of life is compared across groups. The dimensions ‘housing and infrastructure’ and ‘social relationships’ explained the most variance for groups with lower and higher quality of life scores respectively. The results shed light on quality of life in this region, including the great unevenness of well-being. The study provides a basis for the measurement and analysis of quality of life in other regions and countries.

Keywords: Quality of life; Well-being; Composite indices; Gauteng City-Region; Measuring instruments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C38 I31 O15 O18 R11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11205-016-1294-5 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:soinre:v:131:y:2017:i:3:d:10.1007_s11205-016-1294-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11135

DOI: 10.1007/s11205-016-1294-5

Access Statistics for this article

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement is currently edited by Filomena Maggino

More articles in Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().