Construction of a Composite Indicator for the assessment of Quality of Life

The paper proposes the construction of a composite indicator for the assessment of quality of life within Europe. The construction of the indicator is based on the author's own perspective on quality of life concept inspired from and filtered through the study of more than one hundred papers on quality of life and a range of other existent composite indicators of quality of life. The analysis is focused on the 27 member states of the European Union as well as Norway and the candidate countries of Turkey, Macedonia and Croatia. A database including more than 100 measures/indicators that describe quality of life, using various sources (Eurostat, EurLIFE, EQLS, EWCS, WHO, Eurobarometer etc.), is considered as a starting point. Different preliminary analyses are conducted and several criteria are applied in order to keep the most significant measures/indicators in the final construction of the composite indicator. One important problem encountered in the composite indicator of quality of life construction consists in dealing with insufficient data, as many of them are coming from infrequent surveys carried out in different years. Thus, a second purpose of this paper is to suggest a few new variables significant for the level of quality of life within Europe - these should be surveyed annually in order to achieve an objective and realistic image.