QUALITY OF LIFE IN THE CONTEXT OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: African Experience
- T. Ademola Oyejide
- ( paper pages. 1 - 23 )
Abstract
The primary objectives of the paper are to review and assess thedebate on concept and measurement of quality of life and explain therelationship between it and economic growth. The debate in theliterature is that quality of life has two dimensions – objective andsubjective. The objective dimension is measured by quantifiableindicators which reflect material conditions of external environmentsbased primarily on economic growth, while the subjective dimensioncovers personal and psychological perceptions regarding well-beingand life satisfaction. Recent conceptualization of quality of life hasdowngraded income’s pride of place. Two major initiatives whichsubsequently responded to this challenge are the Human DevelopmentIndex (HDI) which emphasize people and their capabilities as theultimate criteria for assessing the development of a country instead ofeconomic growth, and the World Happiness Report (WHR) whichviews happiness as the ultimate outcome of a high quality of life.However, neither of these two initiatives eliminated economic growthor income from the picture. Essentially, both regard income as anecessary but not sufficient condition for achieving high levels ofhuman development (in the case of HDI) or for ensuring high levelsof happiness and life satisfaction (in the case of WHR). While HDIand WHR overlap significantly in terms of variables used to measureeconomic and social performance assessments of countries and thedifferences between them, they do not generally produce the sameresults. To fully understand why and under what circumstances HDIand WHR ranks may differ sharply, especially in the context of African countries, more research is needed. The effective and fruitfuluse of both mechanisms rest squarely on this.
Citation
T. Ademola Oyejide.
2020.
"QUALITY OF LIFE IN THE CONTEXT OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: African Experience"
The Nigerian Journal of Economic and Social Studies,
62 (1): 1 - 23.
JEL Classification
I31, O15
