The importance of including quality-of-life indices in international social and economic development activities

Abstract

Psychology has not been a visible player in international social and economic development efforts. Through its demonstrated commitment to the concept of quality of life, psychology has an opportunity to help shape foreign policy and to improve the lives of countless people around the globe. Poverty has reached unacceptable limits of humanitarian tolerance and political consequence throughout the world. The United Nations estimates that 20% of the world's population now lives in conditions of absolute poverty in which there is an absence of even the bare essentials for living. Social and economic development efforts have often failed despite good intentions because they have often concentrated on improving peoples' material level of living but not their quality of life. This article addresses the need to include quality-of-life (QOL) indices in international social and economic development efforts. In addition, the article calls attention to the need to use valid cross-cultural measurement strategies (i.e., culturally equivalent) when assessing QOL across cultural and national boundaries. Current approaches to social and economic development rely heavily on interventions that do not reflect the actual peoples' perceptions of life satisfaction and subjective well-being. Self-serving political and economic national interests have kept new approaches to development from being implemented. New interventions must be holistic, decentralized, integrated, empowering, participatory, and human-resource directed, and must include culturally equivalent objective and subjective quality-of-life indices as the arbiters of success.