Household satisfaction: Past, present and future perspectives

Abstract

In the past two decades South African quality of life has been measured at the individual level in nationwide surveys and studies of special groups using happiness and satisfaction measures. In 1993 the Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit (Saldru) pioneered a satisfaction measure to capture subjective well‐being at the household level for the Project for Statistics on Living Standards and Development (PSLSD). The article assesses the usefulness of the new indicator by comparing present household satisfaction with individual‐level satisfaction trends and with PSLSD measures of past and projected future satisfaction and household income and expenditure. It is concluded that the household satisfaction measure is a useful social indicator in that it yields consistent and readily interpretable results and is sensitive to income and expenditure differentials. In confirmation of findings from a recent cross‐national study, the higher income households in the Saldru study reported higher levels o...