An assessment of the quality of life in the European Union based on the social indicators approach

This article carries out a multidimensional analysis of welfare based on the social indicators approach aimed at assessing the quality of life in the 25 member countries of the European Union. It begins with description of the social indicators approach and provides some specifications on its most controversial points. It then specifies the principles on which the social indicators were selected, describes the indicators chosen, and details the methodology employed in the empirical analysis. Its results are subsequently explained, in terms of both quality of life as measured by the general and the partial quality of life (QOL) Indexes, and their correlations with the two indicators commonly employed in the EU context for welfare analyses-GDP per capita and Unemployment Rate. The article also reports further information obtained by plotting the QOL Index against GDP per capita, the Unemployment Rate, and an indicator of subjective well-being.