Table Of ContentADVANCING QUALITY OF LIFE
IN A TURBULENT WORLD
Social Indicators Research Series
Volume 29
General Editor:
ALEX C. MICHALOS
University of Northern British Columbia,
Prince George, Canada
Editors:
ED DIENER
University of Illinois, Champaign, U.S.A.
WOLFGANG GLATZER
J.W. Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
TORBJORN MOUM
University of Oslo, Norway
MIRJAM A.G. SPRANGERS
University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
JOACHIM VOGEL
Central Bureau of Statistics, Stockholm, Sweden
RUUT VEENHOVEN
Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
This new series aims to provide a public forum for single treatises and collections of papers on
social indicators research that are too long to be published in our journal Social Indicators
Research. Like the journal, the book series deals with statistical assessments of the quality of life
from abroad perspective. It welcomes the research on wide variety of substantive areas, including
health, crime, housing, education, family life, leisure activities, transportation, mobility,economics,
work, religion and environmental issues. These areas of research will focus on the impact of key
issues such as health on the overall quality of life and vice versa. An international review board,
consisting of Ruut Veenhoven, Joachim Vogel, Ed Diener, Torbjorn Moum, Mirjam A.G. Sprangers
and Wolfgang Glatzer, will ensure the high quality of the series as a whole.
The titles published in this series are listed at the end of this volume.
ADVANCING QUALITY OF LIFE
IN A TURBULENT WORLD
Edited by
RICHARD J. ESTES
University of Pennsylvania
School of Social Policy & Practice
A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN-10 1-4020-5099-2 (HB)
ISBN-13 978-1-4020-5099-2 (HB)
ISBN-10 1-4020-5110-7 (e-book)
ISBN-13 978-1-4020-5110-4 (e-book)
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For Isabella, Andrew, Kieran, Chelsea, Ryan, Lucas, Jack Michael and all
other children who, in time, will inherit the earth and will need
to work together to bring about a more positive future
for themselves and others.
Table of Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgements xiii
Contributors xv
Part I Regional and National Perspectives on
Advancing Quality of Life
How Does European Union Enlargement Affect Social Cohesion? 3
Wolfgang Keck and Peter Krause
Promoting Well-Being: A British Perspective 25
Beverley A. Searle
Importance and Satisfaction With Life Domains in Croatia:
Representative Sample 41
Ljiljana Kaliterna Lipovcan and Zvjezdana Prizmic-Larsen
Part II Advancing Quality of Life in Selected Sectors
Commuting and Quality of Life: The Italian Case 55
Giampaolo Nuvolati
An Alternative Measure ofYears of Healthy Life 67
Alexandre Klementiev
Analyzing “Sustainable Wealth” Indicators for Evaluating the
Contribution of a Regional Industrial Sector Toward Quality of
Life and Sustainable Development 85
Martina Schäfer and Lydia Illge
Fuel Sources and Well-Being in the Marshall Islands 103
Jagjit Singh
vii
viii CONTENTS
Spirituality as a Robust Empirical Predictor of Psychosocial
Outcomes: A Cross-Cultural Analysis 117
Ralph L. Piedmont
Hope and Spirituality in the Age of Anxiety 135
Anthony Scioli
Part III Advancing Quality of Life for Selected
Population Groups
Communitarian versus Individualistic Arrangements in the
Family: What and Whose Income Matters for Happiness? 153
Mariano Rojas
Socioeconomic Inequality and Inequalities in Health
Among Kibbutz Elderly 169
Uriel Leviatan and Chagit Salm
Life Satisfaction Crossover Among Couples 191
Melvin Prince, Chris Manolis and Randi Minetor
Migrant Family Adaptation and Quality of Life: A Qualitative
Study in Brazil 209
Cynthia Harr
Index 221
Preface
Environmentalissuescontinuedtoloomlargeinthelastdecadeofthetwentiethcen-
tury,especiallyenvironmentalproblemsrelatedtorisinglevelsofCO emissionsand
2
other greenhouse gases on the planet’s average temperatures and, subsequently,
stormpatterns.Floodsanddroughts,incombinationwithunseasonablyhighand
lowtemperaturesbecamethenormratherthantheexceptionforlargeexpansesof
Africa,AsiaandOceania.EvenlargeareasofEuropeandNorthAmericaweresub-
jectedtorecurrentfloodsanddroughtsandexperiencedunseasonableextremesof
hot and cold temperatures associated with man-made intrusions into the natural
environment.And,still,aglobalplanofactiontohaltman-relatedpatternsofdefor-
estation,desertification,andover-fishingoftheseashasyettocomeintobeing.
At the same time, the number of regional conflicts and civil wars increased
and, with them, the lives of many women, children, old people and other non-
combatants were lost in these conflicts. Increasingly, regional wars and conflicts
had less to do with disputes over land or other natural resources but more with
the differing social, political and religious identifications of the people engaged
in these conflicts. Warnings of genocide and near-genocide conditions were
commonly proclaimed to the world community but, sadly, the planet’s interna-
tional security apparatus proved to be largely ineffective in containing many of
the worst of these atrocities. As a result, hundreds of thousands of people, even-
tually millions, died while awaiting assistance from the global community to
bring an end to their suffering. Some nations, forming a “coalition of the will-
ing,” adopted a policy of pre-emptive intervention in an effort to halt what they
perceived to be the most egregious assaults on world peace and humanitarian
values but, in the process, unwittingly laid the foundation for other nations to
adopt the same policy in pursuing less noble goals. Certainly, the threat of sec-
tarian conflict and the much discussed “clash of civilizations” looms larger
today than at any time in the recent past.
Against the backdrop of environmental failure, regional conflicts, and civil
wars large parts of Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia also were subjected to
recurrent hunger and famines. Rain simply did not fall with the regularity or in the
quantities that it had for centuries before and, when the rains did eventually come,
they came in the form of fierce storms that eroded the precious top soil needed to
ix
x PREFACE
produce food and care for livestock and other animals. Floods in combination with
droughts, earthquakes in combination with tornadoes and other powerful natural
forces, and rapid shifts in temperatures from extreme cold to extreme heat became
typical in many regions of the world. Even Western and Southern European nations
found themselves unprepared for the sudden environmental challenges that
confront them.
During the last decade of the twentieth century, Human Immunodeficiency
Virus (HIV) and Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) also continued
their course of infecting and, in time, bringing death to hundreds of thousands of
people each year—many of them women and children who did nothing to incur the
original infection. Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome(SARS) also emerged on the
global stage and, in recent years, the threat of a widespread Avian Flupandemic has
surfaced. And, still, millions of children die each year from malaria, tuberculosis,
and other contagious diseases for which inexpensive and readily available vaccines
and cures already exist. And, today, diseases long believed to be under control—
anthrax, botulism, smallpox—have been developed into “weapons of mass destruc-
tion” (WMD) for use by potential terrorists and other for use against their own
people and those of other nations.
And, yet, threats to global well-being are not uniformly distributed.
Indeed, the quality of life for many of the world’s richest economies has
reached an all-time high. “Happiness,” “life satisfaction,” “well-being” all rank
more favorably among economically advanced countries than among poorer
ones; and the average scores on these metrics for rich countries continue to
show improvement over time. No, the problems of global disharmony and con-
flict, though they touch rich countries in many important and serious ways, are
far more concentrated among the world’s poorest and middle-income nations,
thereby, surfacing yet another gap in development between the world’s “social
haves” and “social have nots.” The problem would be less serious if it were not
the case that “social haves” comprise only about 17% of the world’s total pop-
ulation while “social have nots” account for 83% of the total—almost all of
them located in developing Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Even more to the
point is the reality that the 17% of the world’s population that lives in compar-
atively well-off countries depend disproportionately for their high standard of
living on the goods and services they import from “social have not” nations
(e.g., energy, food, inexpensive labor, etc.).
The Sixth International Conference of the International
Society for Quality of Life Studies (ISQOLS)
It was with the preceding backdrop that the International Society for Quality of
Life Studies (ISQOLS) convened its 6th international conference in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania. Approximately 350 quality of life researchers from 65 nations
attended the conference and, together, struggled to formulate ways to understand
and, subsequently conceptualize and measure the profound social, political and
economic changes taking place at all levels of social organization throughout the
PREFACE xi
world. All in attendance at this biennial meeting shared a keen commitment to
using their skills in the service of improving the world situation, albeit in capac-
ities appropriate to their roles as educators, researchers and scholars.
Approximately 250 presentations were made during the conference—the major-
ity of which focused on approaches that might be taken to advancing quality of
life worldwide. By now many of these contributions have found their way into
other publications—as books, monographs, invited chapters or articles in qual-
ity-of-life-related journals and publications. Other presentations have served as
the basis for specialized conferences or as background documents for important
“white papers” seeking to bring about broad-based social, economic and political
change.
This Volume
This volume includes a selection of the very best papers presented at the
Philadelphia meeting of ISQOLS. The papers are grouped into three parts. Part I
contains three papers that focus on regional and national perspectives on advancing
quality of life for large aggregates of people. Particular attention is given in Part I
to the quality of life challenges that confront the United Kingdom, Croatia and,
now, a significantly enlarged European Union (N(cid:1)25). Each chapter provides
keen insights into the special development issues confronting their nations and
regions and, in turn, serves as a case study for exploring alternative approaches to
advancing quality of life theory, assessment and practice under conditions of con-
siderable change...sometimes conflict.
Part II contains six chapters that focus on understanding and advancing
quality of life in selected sectors of special interest to quality of life researchers
and practitioners: transportation, health, economic development, sustainable
development, energy, and socio-religious-cultural integration. Part II also deals
with issues of core values of concern to people everywhere and concludes with
two thoughtful papers that examine the relationship between quality of life, hope,
and spirituality.
Part III contains four papers that focus on quality of life challenges that
confront particular population groups of special interest to quality of life
researchers. Common to all four papers is their concern for families, children,
the elderly, persons with serious physical or emotional disabilities and, more
broadly, the degree of social attachment experienced by these population
groups to larger communities. Characteristically, each paper draws on different
theoretical and methodological traditions for explicating the dynamics that
influence levels of quality of life experienced by each group studied. Each
chapter, in turn, offers a somewhat different set of recommendations for
advancing quality of life for both the populations studied directly and for the
world-as-a-whole.
In all, the 13 papers included in Advancing Quality of Life in a Turbulent
World reflect the considerable diversity that exists in the conceptualization and
measurement of “quality of life.” The chapters also reflect considerable diversity
