Standard of living vs quality of life

RedEyedAbyss

These are not the same thing and one does not necessarily correlate to the other. Standard of living is simply a measure of how well you can access goods and service, usually using income. Quality of life is a more subjective measurement that measures stuff like your physical and mental well-being. Naturally, having more stuff doesn't necessarily make you more happy (and I'd argue at some point, the pursuit of consumer goods actually worsens quality of life).

On a side note, I must admit that I was wary of economics for the longest time partly because of a stereotyped notion that they focussed too much on the former and not so much on the latter. Might be true, might not, but it would have helped if I actually took an economics class.

Gelzo

I might be wrong, but I think economics pays more attention to whether people get what they want than whether they get what they ought to have. Which I think makes sense given that the latter can be harder to judge.

ClockworkUniverse

^What he said. Basically, one of them is something that can be measured, so that's the one that gets measured.

Icalasari

I recall reading on Cracked that the world's happiest country is also one of the poorest

Not sure how true that is...

ClockworkUniverse

I believe psychologists determined a specific (fairly low) income below which money correlates to happiness, and above which it doesn't.

Icalasari

I'm guessing that the income is enough to survive and buy a few things for enjoyment (eg an occasional book)?

ClockworkUniverse

Presumably.

IanExMachina

>I recall reading on Cracked that the world's happiest country is also one of the poorest

I think they are basing on HPI which has some major criticisms so I wouldn't call it that perfect.

I'd probably use the HDI and then look at the factors that each country has there and extrapolate from that.