Quality of life concerns individual (physical and psychological health), interpersonal (social relationships) and contextual (environment) aspects, which are both subjective and objective. In considering contextual characteristics, empirical findings have demonstrated that people's relation to their living environment is a key issue for their…

The article covers the main steps of official statistics in the second half of the Nineties through the illustration of the transition from economic oriented official statistics to the quality of life approach. The system of the Multipurpose Surveys introduced in 1993 to give an answer to questions at social level and to provide indicators for…

The calculation of composite indicators and the derivation of respective rankings is a common method used to benchmark countries or regions. However, although the statistical robustness of these rankings is often criticised, they often still spark off heated political debate. Here, we assess the sensitivity of the province ranking published by the…