It is increasingly acknowledged that the proper objective of government efforts towards
economic development should be aimed at improvements beyond simple measures of
growth, poverty and inequality towards richer measures of human well-being. Herein, the
economic and non-economic quality of life, as well as the quantity of life, becomes
important indicators. Economists and other social planners therefore need to develop more
meaningful indicators of the quality of life. Objective and subjective indicators of the quality
of life can be distinguished. For various reasons, this thesis will focus on the search for more
meaningful objective indicators of the quality of life.
One of the most wellknown objective indicators of quality of life is the Human
Development Index (HDI). There is, however, a growing dissatisfaction with the HDI. In
this thesis, two recent methodological advances in the measurement of quality of life are
applied and combined and, in particular, in the measurement of the non-economic quality of
life, to the sub-national quality of life in South Africa. As such, this thesis’ contribution is
twofold. First, it investigates the extent to which the quality of life differs within a
developing country, as opposed to most studies that focus on either inter-country
differences in quality of life, or studies that focus only on spatial inequalities within countries
using a restricted set of measures such as per capita income or poverty rates and headcounts.
Secondly, this thesis applies a recent methodology proposed by McGillivray (2005) to isolate
the non-economic (non-monetary) quality of life in various composite indices and to focus
on the non-economic quality of life across 351 South African magisterial districts
Indices for the non-economic quality of life are compiled for geographical quality, for
demographic quality, and based on the human development index. Furthermore, given that
composite indices used in the construction of measures of quality of life consist of
weightings of multiple proxies, this thesis implements the method of Lubotsky and Wittenberg (2006) which proposed a new estimator for the case where multiple proxies are
to be used for a single, unobserved variable such as quality of life.
This thesis establishes that when the non-economic quality of life of the demographic index
is considered, the top ten regions in 1001 were as follows: Pretoria, Johannesburg, Soweto,
Port Elizabeth, Durban, Inanda, Pietermaritzburg, Wynberg, Mitchellsplain and
Vanderbijlpark. It is important to note that, when interpreting these results, one should take
caution since variables such as the number of people, number of households etc. is included
in this index and as a region grows in population size the more negative consequences such
as a higher crime rate can be associated with the particular region.
The top ten regions in which to reside in 1004 as determined by the geography quality of life
index were: Calvinia, Gordonia, Namaqualand, Kenhardt, Carnarvon, Ubombo, Williston,
Hlabisa, Ceres and Ingwavuma. This geography index measures a region's natural beauty
which, according to Wey (2000), contributes positively to one's perceived quality of life.
Considering changes in non-economic quality of life indices between 1996 and 2004, the
conclusion can he drawn that the South African government has been successful to a certain
degree in addressing non-economic quality of life. Social policies such as health care,
education, housing, water and sanitation appear to have had a positive effect on people's
perceived non-economic quality of life in areas that were relatively deprived in 1996. / Thesis (Ph.D. (Economics))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NWUBOLOKA1/oai:dspace.nwu.ac.za:10394/1299 |
| Date | January 2007 |
| Creators | Rossouw, Stephanié |
| Publisher | North-West University |
| Source Sets | North-West University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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