Vision to Reality: The Reut Blog

Reut’s regional development team recently participated in a meeting organized by ELKA, regarding measuring quality of life in Israel. Head of Israel’s Progress Index project (“Erech”), Anat Itay spoke about the process of defining, measuring and fostering an alternative index to GDP, which would focus on a variety of components of quality of life, in addition to material welfare.

The concept “Quality of Life” is a complex concept affected by abstract factors and subjective perceptions that refers to the collection of indicators that influence an individual’s wellbeing. Therefore, the latest evolution in this field is the recognition that the selection of indicators should not only be made by experts (Top-Down), but also developed in a bottom-up process, in which communities choose their own indicators.

Currently, the main challenge is how to define a unique QOL in each country or region, which relies on subjective indicators, while at the same time choosing core indicators which will allow a comparison between QOL in different countries and regions.

For further details see Reut’s products regarding quality of life.