Social Quality as a Measure for Social Progress

There is a growing recognition that GDP might not properly measure the real progress of a society. Although it is still a very useful measure, it was not designed to capture the social aspect of development. Accordingly, multiple attempts are being made to come up with a supplementary, or alternativ...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Development and society 2011, 40(2), , pp.153-172
Main Authors: Yee, Jaeyeol(이재열), Chang, Dukjin(장덕진)
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Democracy
Democratization
Dependency theory
Economic growth
Economic systems
Eigenvalues
Empowerment
Financial risk
GDP
Government corruption
Gross Domestic Product
Inequality
Lifeworld
Modernization
Personal empowerment
Prespective on Comparative Studies
Quality of life
Social progress
Society
Sociology
Wellbeing
사회학
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Summary:There is a growing recognition that GDP might not properly measure the real progress of a society. Although it is still a very useful measure, it was not designed to capture the social aspect of development. Accordingly, multiple attempts are being made to come up with a supplementary, or alternative, measure of social progress. As one such attempt, we focus on the concept and accompanying indicators of social quality originally devised by European scholars. Although social quality is a solid theoretical construct, we find that there are ambiguities when it comes to empirical application to the real world data. Analyses of data across 34 mostly OECD countries reveal that a modified concept and accompanying indicators better survive the reality check, but still consistent with the original concept of social quality. Using this modified set of indicators, we show the relative performance of these countries and suggest that there are three different types of social quality regime.
ISSN:1598-8074
2671-4574
2671-8200
DOI:10.21588/dns.2011.40.2.001