Abstract
According to Ruut Veenhoven, who is being honored and whose impressive scientific oeuvre is appreciated by this Festschrift, “quality of life research tries to define what a good life is and how well reality meets these standards” (Veenhoven 1997). Today, this definition of quality of life research is as true as it was in the end of the 1990s. It seems to be less certain however, that the sense of “a good life” today and tomorrow is and will be still the same as it was by then and over the last couple of decades. Of course, it is currently unknown how the good life will be defined and recognized in the future, but there is a substantial likelihood that it’s sense will change dramatically. This short essay starts from the observation that the notion of a good life, which we became acquainted with, is increasingly coming under attack—not least as a byproduct of the global anti-climate-change movement—and thus reflects on the future of the quality of life concept and research.
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Notes
- 1.
The wording in the article originally published in French language reads: “La recherche sur la qualité de vie tente de définir ce qu’est une «bonne vie» et comment la réalité correspond aux critères ou standards adoptés.” (Veenhoven 1997: 30)
- 2.
See for example the German (Noll 2014a), and European System of Social Indicators (Noll 2014b), the OECD Better Life Index—Project (www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org) or Eurostat’s Quality of Life Indicators (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Quality_of_life_indicators)
- 3.
As a matter of fact almost thirty years later the number of cars in China amounted to 260 million (2019). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicles_per_capita
- 4.
It would go beyond the scope of this short essay to also have a look at a less known third strategy, which in the German discussion is called “consistency” (e.g. Huber 1995) and has a certain similarity to the so-called “cradle to cradle”-approach (McDonough and Braungart 2002). Rather than aiming at improved effectiveness (e.g. of traditional power plants), the focus is at a qualitative transformation of the industrial metabolism (e.g. renewable energies).
- 5.
For a detailed discussion of the “sufficiency concept” and “sufficiency research” see e.g. Linz (2004).
- 6.
See for example the OECD “Better Life” programme, the Programme for Measuring National Well-being in the UK, the work and report of the “Commission on the measurement of economic performance and social progress” established by the French President Nicolas Sarkozy as well as various EU activities and strategies of going “beyond GDP”.
- 7.
The statement by the head of the fundamental programme commission of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) Gesine Schwan, reads in German: “weg vom Konsum, hin zu einem kreativeren Miteinander. Dann kann auch Verzicht Gewinn sein.” See FAZ.Net, March, 9, 2020. https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/inland/grundwertekommission-mit-der-spd-die-welt-retten-16669409.html?premium)
- 8.
A working group (including the author of this essay), which was established to explore the possibilities of maintaining high levels of subjective well-being under conditions of decreasing prosperity in Germany, came—based on survey data analyses—to the result, that life satisfaction was much more driven by material success variables than by immaterial factors like health, social relations or freedom. See the “Memorandum der Arbeitsgruppe ‘Zufriedenheit’ des Ameranger Disputs der Ernst Freiberger-Stiftung” (2010: 14).
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Noll, HH. (2021). The Good Life under Attack: Reflections on the Future of the Quality of Life Concept. In: Michalos, A.C. (eds) The Pope of Happiness. Social Indicators Research Series, vol 82. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53779-1_20
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