Social Well-Being and Quality of Life

• Social well-being and quality of life (QoL) describe how well people live: their health, education, income, security, dignity, freedom and environment, not just their income.
• Social well-being is a collective condition: a society in which basic needs are met, people are treated fairly and equally, and communities live in peace with chances to advance.
• Quality of life is the individual’s condition and satisfaction within a given social and spatial setting. It has two sides:
  • Objective conditions that can be measured: income, literacy, life expectancy, housing.
  • Subjective judgements of life: happiness, satisfaction, a sense of security.
• In short, QoL brings together material well-being, social equity and environmental sustainability. Geographers study how it varies from place to place and why.

Concepts

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Origins of the Idea

• The idea is old. Aristotle wrote of eudaimonia, “the good life” and “living well”, and of how public policy can nurture it.
• In geography, interest grew with the welfare approach of the early 1970s.
  • The quantitative revolution had studied spatial order; the radical and welfare critics asked who benefits from it.
  • The focus shifted from “marginal land” to “marginal social space“: poverty, hunger, crime, inequality and access to services.
• David M. Smith made welfare the centre of human geography.
  • The Geography of Social Well-being in the United States (1973) mapped territorial social indicators across American States and cities.
  • Human Geography: A Welfare Approach (1977) defined the subject as the study of “who gets what, where, and how”.
  • He argued for territorial social justice: resources should follow need, not only income or political power.
• From the 1970s the social indicators movement and the basic needs approach (ILO, 1976) pushed governments to measure welfare directly, not through GDP alone.

Quality of Life and Related Terms

• WHO (1995) treats QoL as a person’s own perception of their position in life, judged against their culture, values, goals and expectations.
• A broader view counts both objective and subjective conditions: needs met, the autonomy to choose, and living in a society with trust, fairness and social connection within a sustainable environment.

• QoL must not be confused with standard of living, which rests mainly on income. QoL also counts the built environment, physical and mental health, education, leisure and social belonging.

Components of Quality of Life

• Physical well-being: climate, terrain, density, physical and mental health.
• Material well-being: housing, household goods, transport and communication.
• Social well-being: social health, social security, amenities and relations, social ethos.
• Economic well-being: jobs, income, savings, purchasing power, consumption.
• Perceived well-being: attitudes, experiences and subjective satisfaction.
• Spiritual well-being: beliefs and practices through which people seek meaning and happiness.

Social Well-Being

• Social well-being means a condition in which basic human needs are met and people can coexist peacefully in communities with opportunities for advancement.
• A “well society” is one where everyone has enough income for basic needs, is treated with equal dignity and rights, has reasonable access to services, and is heard and respected.
• Common components used to measure it:
  • Health; education; food and nutrition.
  • Equality and freedom; law and order.
  • Pollution and environmental quality.
  • Social structure, for example the sex ratio and the position of women and minorities.
• It is partly subjective:
  • its meaning differs between village and city, hill and plain, and between age, class and ethnic groups in the same place.
• It has cultural and technological overtones:
  • Developed countries reached high well-being early through rapid industrialisation and urbanisation, which changed social needs and values.
  • In most developing countries these processes have been slow and selective, so social needs change more slowly and unevenly.

Dimensions of Social Well-Being and Quality of Life

• No single indicator captures well-being. It has at least eight dimensions, which work together.

• Economic: growth alone does not guarantee QoL when income inequality persists. Hence the shift from growth to inclusive growth.
• Health: life expectancy, infant and maternal mortality and mental health; better health systems and nutrition raise every other dimension.
• Education: raises skills and awareness, lowers fertility, improves health. Female education has the widest effects on family welfare and gender equality.
• Social equality: high inequality produces social tension and lowers overall well-being; inclusion lets marginal groups share in growth.
• Environment: pollution and poor sanitation bring disease and shorten lives; sustainable development balances growth with conservation.
• Political: stability, rule of law, transparency and human rights decide how fairly resources and services are distributed.
• Cultural cohesion: strong communities give support systems and trust; diversity enriches life when managed inclusively. These ties are the social capital of a place.
• Psychological: even rich regions can have low QoL when stress and isolation are high.

Quality of Life: A Systems Model

• The domains-of-living approach treats QoL as built from several domains: family and friends, work and income, shelter and neighbourhood, community, health, education and spirituality.
• Each domain is judged twice: by its objective conditions and by how people perceive them. Together they give an overall assessment of life.
• The indicators then feed back into policy, which changes the conditions in each domain.

• Population and well-being:
  • Gains in health, education and income have been large in both developed and developing countries.
  • But in the least developed countries, rapid population growth strains food, water, housing, schools and the environment, which makes better QoL harder to reach.
  • The relation is two-way: better health and schooling also lower fertility.

Measuring Well-Being

Approaches

• Single indicators (GNI per head, life expectancy) are simple but partial.
• Composite indices combine several dimensions into one score:
  • Achievement indices show how well people live on average (PQLI, HDI).
  • Deprivation indices show who lacks what (HPI, MPI).
  • Distribution indices show how unequally gains are shared (IHDI, GDI, GII).
  • Subjective and sustainability indices show how people feel and what it costs the planet (World Happiness Report, Gross National Happiness, PHDI).
• Behind the indices lie four approaches to development and well-being:
  • Income approach: well-being rises with GDP or GNI per head; simple, but blind to distribution and to non-market goods.
  • Welfare approach: people as beneficiaries of state provision (food, housing, services); the basis of welfare geography.
  • Basic needs approach (1970s): secure food, shelter, health, water and schooling for all first; measured by PQLI-type indicators.
  • Capability approach of Amartya Sen: development means expanding what people are able to do and to be, their real freedoms and choices. It underlies the HDI and MPI.
• Spatial scale matters: well-being varies between countries, between regions of a country, and within cities, where slums and gated colonies sit side by side.

Physical Quality of Life Index (PQLI)

• Devised by Morris David Morris (1979) as an alternative to income measures.
• Three indicators: infant mortality, life expectancy at age one and basic literacy, each scaled 0–100 and averaged.
• Strength: focuses on basic needs and social outcomes.
• Limitations: ignores income and freedom; IMR and life expectancy overlap.

Human Development Index (HDI)

• The Human Development Index was introduced by UNDP in 1990, designed by Mahbub ul Haq on Amartya Sen’s capability approach.
• Three dimensions:
  • A long and healthy life: life expectancy at birth.
  • Knowledge: mean years of schooling (adults 25+) and expected years of schooling (children).
  • A decent standard of living: GNI per head at purchasing power parity, on a log scale.
• Each is scaled between fixed goalposts, and the HDI is their geometric mean (since 2010), so a weakness in one cannot be fully offset by another.
• Countries fall into four groups: very high (0.800+), high (0.700–0.799), medium (0.550–0.699), low (below 0.550).
• Worked example, India 2023:
  • Each dimension index = (actual value − minimum) ÷ (maximum − minimum).
  • Health: (72.0 − 20) ÷ (85 − 20) = 0.800.
  • Education: expected schooling 13.0 ÷ 18 = 0.720 and mean schooling 6.9 ÷ 15 = 0.459; their average is 0.589.
  • Income: (ln 9,047 − ln 100) ÷ (ln 75,000 − ln 100) = 0.681.
  • HDI = cube root of (0.800 × 0.589 × 0.681) = 0.685.
  • The weakest component, education (mean schooling), pulls India’s HDI down most.
• Strengths: puts people, not output, at the centre; simple and comparable.
• Limitations:
  • It is an average that hides inequality, gender gaps and regional disparities.
  • It leaves out freedom, security, environment and quality of education.
  • Income has diminishing weight but is still crudely measured.
  • Data quality varies, especially for poorer countries.
• These criticisms produced the newer indices below.

Indices of Inequality and Gender

• Inequality-adjusted HDI (IHDI, 2010): discounts each HDI dimension for inequality within the country. The gap from HDI is the loss to inequality.
• Gender Development Index (GDI, 1995; revised 2014): female HDI ÷ male HDI.
• Gender Inequality Index (GII, 2010): inequality in reproductive health (maternal mortality, adolescent births), empowerment (parliamentary seats, secondary schooling) and the labour market. It replaced the Gender Empowerment Measure.

Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI)

• Developed in 2010 by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) and UNDP, using the Alkire–Foster method. It replaced the Human Poverty Index (1997–2009).
• Ten indicators in three equally weighted dimensions:
  • Health: nutrition, child mortality.
  • Education: years of schooling, school attendance.
  • Living standard: cooking fuel, sanitation, drinking water, electricity, housing, assets.
• A person is poor if deprived in a third or more of the weighted indicators. MPI = H × A: the headcount (H) times the intensity (A) of deprivation.
• Global MPI 2025: 1.1 billion of 6.3 billion people in 109 countries (18.3%) are poor, over half of them children.
• India’s National MPI (NITI Aayog) adds two indicators, maternal health and bank accounts, to make twelve.
• Strength: shows who is poor and in what way, which guides targeted policy. Limitation: needs detailed household surveys and depends on the indicators chosen.

Subjective and Other Measures

• World Happiness Report (UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, since 2012):
  • Ranks countries by people’s own rating of their lives on a 0–10 ladder.
  • Explained by income, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity and perceived corruption.
  • Limitation: shaped by culture and expectations.
• Gross National Happiness: a policy goal of Bhutan since the 1970s.
• Planetary pressures-adjusted HDI (PHDI, 2020): discounts HDI for carbon emissions and material footprint.
• SDG Index: tracks progress on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals; India’s SDG India Index (NITI Aayog, since 2018) ranks States.
• Other indices: the OECD Better Life Index, the Social Progress Index and the Economist Intelligence Unit’s QoL index add political stability, climate, job security and family life.

Limits of Measurement

• Weights are arbitrary: equal weights for health, education and income are a value judgement.
• Averages hide distribution between regions, classes, castes and genders.
• Data lag and quality: many indicators come from surveys several years old.
• Cultural bias: what counts as a “good life” differs between societies.
• Objective and subjective measures can diverge. Richard Easterlin (1974) found that average happiness in rich countries did not rise in step with income: the Easterlin paradox.

World Pattern of Well-Being

Human Development

• In 2023 the world HDI was 0.756 (UNDP HDR 2025). Of 193 countries, 74 had very high, 50 high, 43 medium and 26 low human development.
• Very high: Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand, Japan and South Korea, and the Gulf states. Iceland (0.972) ranked first, followed by Norway and Switzerland (0.970).
• High: most of Latin America, China (0.797), Central Asia, North Africa and much of South-East Asia.
• Medium: South Asia (0.672), including India and Bangladesh (0.685), and parts of Africa and Central America.
• Low: concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa (0.568): South Sudan (0.388) is last, with Somalia and Chad. Afghanistan, Yemen and Pakistan are also low.
• Income and human development do not always match:
  • Cuba, with a lower income per head than India, has an HDI of 0.762.
  • Equatorial Guinea, richer than India per head, has a lower HDI (0.674).
  • Oil wealth alone does not ensure equal gains: the Gulf states rank lower on HDI than on income.
• Inequality cuts human development most where it is already low: the loss to inequality is about 34% in Sub-Saharan Africa and 30% in South Asia, against 10% in very high HDI countries.

Poverty, Gender and Happiness

• Multidimensional poverty is concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Countries with low or medium HDI hold about 90% of the world’s MPI-poor.
• Gender inequality (GII) is highest in Sub-Saharan Africa (0.558) and the Arab States (0.539), and lowest in the very high HDI countries (0.125).
• World Happiness Report 2026: Finland is first for the ninth year running; Nordic countries fill most of the top places, and Costa Rica (4th) is the highest-ranked Latin American country ever. Afghanistan is last.

Well-Being in India

India’s Human Development

• HDI 0.685 (2023), rank 130 of 193, in the medium group and close to the high threshold of 0.700.
  • Up from 0.446 in 1990, a rise of about 54%.
  • Life expectancy 72.0 years, expected schooling 13.0 years, mean schooling 6.9 years, GNI per head about PPP$ 9,000.
• Inequality and gender:
  • IHDI 0.475: about 31% of human development is lost to inequality.
  • GDI 0.874 and GII 0.403 (rank 102): low female labour force participation and a small share of seats for women are the main gaps.
• Happiness: India ranks 116th of 147 in the World Happiness Report 2026.

Multidimensional Poverty in India

• India’s National MPI shows a steep fall:
  • 55.3% (2005–06) → 24.9% (2015–16) → 15.0% (2019–21).
  • NITI Aayog’s estimates put it at 29.2% in 2013–14 and 11.3% in 2022–23: about 24.82 crore people escaped multidimensional poverty in nine years. These two figures are interpolated or projected, not surveyed.
  • Uttar Pradesh (5.94 crore), Bihar (3.77 crore) and Madhya Pradesh (2.30 crore) saw the largest absolute declines.
• State pattern (2019–21):
  • Highest: Bihar (33.8%), Jharkhand (28.8%), Meghalaya (27.8%), Uttar Pradesh (22.9%), Madhya Pradesh (20.6%).
  • Lowest: Kerala (0.55%), Goa, Puducherry, Lakshadweep, Tamil Nadu (2.2%).
  • Poorer States fell fastest, so the gap is narrowing; Bihar is still the poorest and Kerala the least poor.
• Deprivation is deepest among Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes: in 2015–16, 50.6% of STs and 33.3% of SCs were multidimensionally poor (Global MPI 2021).

Recent Indicators

• Survival (SRS 2024): the infant mortality rate fell to 24 per 1,000 live births, but ranges from 8 in Kerala to 36 in Chhattisgarh; under-five mortality is 41 in Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh against 9 in Kerala.
• From NFHS-6 (2023–24):
  • Electricity: 98.3% of people live in electrified homes (96.8% in NFHS-5).
  • Health insurance: households with a covered member rose from 41.0% to 60.2%.
  • Women with 10 or more years of schooling: 46.4%, up from 41.0%.
  • Women who have used the internet: 64.3%, nearly double the 33.3% of NFHS-5.
  • Child stunting fell from 35.5% to 29.3%, but remains high; nutrition is still the weakest part of Indian well-being.

Regional Pattern in India

• High well-being: Kerala, Goa, Tamil Nadu, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab and most UTs.
  • The Kerala model shows that public health, female literacy and land reform can deliver high QoL at modest income.
• Low well-being: the central and eastern belt: Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, and Meghalaya and Assam in the north-east.
• The SDG India Index 2023–24 gives the same picture: India 71, Kerala and Uttarakhand 79 at the top, Bihar 57 at the bottom.
• Causes of the disparities:
  • Historical: land tenure, colonial neglect, and uneven early investment in schools and hospitals.
  • Economic: agricultural dependence, low industrialisation, high population growth in the poorer States.
  • Social: caste and gender inequality, low female literacy and autonomy.
  • Governance: quality of public services and delivery.
• Policy responses: Aspirational Districts Programme (2018), Ayushman Bharat, Jal Jeevan Mission, Swachh Bharat, POSHAN Abhiyaan, and direct benefit transfers to households.