Standard of living

An individual's or a socioeconomic class's standard of living is the level of wealth, comfort, material goods, and necessities available to them in a certain geographical area, usually a country. The standard of living includes factor as a whole quality and availability of employment, class disparity, poverty rate, quality and housing affordability, hours of work are required to purchase necessities, gross domestic product, inflation rate, amount of leisure time every year, affordable (or free) access to quality healthcare, quality and availability of education, literacy rates, life expectancy, occurrence of diseases, cost of goods and services, infrastructure, access to, quality and affordability of public transportation, national economic growth, economic and political stability, freedom, environmental quality, climate and safety. The standard of living is closely related to quality of life.[1]

Measurement

Standard of living is generally measured by standards such as realistic (i.e. inflation adjusted) income per person and poverty rate. Other measures such as access and quality of health care, income growth inequality, and educational standards are also used. Examples are access to certain goods (such as number of refrigerators per 1000 people), or measurement of health such as life expectancy. It is the ease by which people living in a time or place are able to satisfy their needs and/or wants.

The main idea of a 'standard' may be contrasted with the quality of life, which takes into account not only the material standard of living, but also other more intangible aspects that make up human life, such as leisure, safety, cultural resources, social life, physical health, environmental quality issues etc. More complexed means of measuring well-being must be employed to make such judgments, and these are very often political, thus controversial. Even between two nations or societies that have similar material standards of living, quality of life factors may in fact make one of these places more attractive to a given individual or group.

See also

References

  1. "Standard of Living Definition". Investopedia.com. 29 August 2019. Retrieved 25 September 2019.
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