Qualities of Living - A Quick Note

The magazine International Living produces an annual country-by-country quality of life index for, presumably, American retirees and others looking for an expat's landing pad. Their index variables: cost of living, culture, economy, environment, freedom, health, infrastructure, safety and risk. [1]

In my lengthening journey online and in-synch with some parts of my graduate work, I've taken note of "qualities of living" concieved as some combination of physical, psychological, and spiritual amenity nestled within geographical, political, and social accommodations.

There's more to being somewhere, anywhere, than may have to do with differentiating between being young and serving and older, established, and being served, however ambivalent one may be about the former or comforted by the latter. 

Moreover, setting peripatetic retirees or other wealthy enough jet setters aside, most of humanity hasn't a great choice about where it has happened to be born or living, and now communicating the differences in, say, personal "degrees of freedom", "religiosity" and "religious orientation", financial security, access to true, responsible, independent courts, justice, and "rule of law", customary lifestyles (a cultural variable) and phsycial and psychological "carrying capacity" (too few inhabitants, too many, just right for the area, landscape, resources available, and customary ideals associated with material distribution?), the negativity in the difference may carry some hurtful messages as well as challenges.

No one would wish to be caught in a country at the bottom of a "quality of life" index, but tens of millions of souls have gotten just that deal.

Can things far down the scale be made better or even completely reversed?

I'm confident about saying "yes!" to that question, but the true drivers of dire conditions may need to be understood and addressed to do it.

It may not help, for example, to bloviate all over "economic development" without accompanying conversations about cultural and social assumptions, behaviors, and stressors.

Most certainly as regards justice and security issues -- what could be called "fair deal" issues -- one cannot, must not, shy from the unchecked autocratic control of state revenues, the structuring of military and paramilitary forces, the corruption (ownership) of a judiciary at many levels, and birth-to-cradle control over language issues, access to information (start with a free press), and education.

I invite any to assess for themselves the relationship between the political and social affairs of their state and their state's rank in International Living's quality of life index. 

While looking over the 2011 numbers, do keep in mind that the top overall score is 86 (United States -- may as well stay home, lol) and the low score is 28 (Somalia -- as if one wouldn't guess; however, in the "0" freedom ranking dimension as distilled by International Living, Somalia shares the distinction with Equatorial Guinea, Sudan, North Korea, Burma, Turkmenistan, and Libya -- each state anarchic or locked down but equally badgered or obsessed with conflict and the many fragments of its own martial self-concept. 

Reference

1. International Living.  "International Living's Quality of Life Index 2011: Where the Numbers Come From."  December 30, 2010.

International Living.  "2011 Quality of Life Index."

International Living.  "Where to Find the World's Best Quality of Life in 2011."  December 30, 2011.