Proxy for Quality of Life
How does one measure “quality of life” in a country? The topic is subjective, after all. Which criteria do you select for comparison? Can those criteria always be quantified? On the other hand, some quantifiable items are debatable – is a high value necessarily a sign that things are better? Others, like per-capita income (average income) are messy – the kind of life one can have with a salary of say, $50,000 per year in the US is vastly worse than the kind of life one can have with the equivalent ( ₹ 40 lakhs per year) in India because purchasing power differs. What about the unquantifiables, like the convenience of door delivery, and affordability of, say, maids? In Numbers Don’t Lie , Vaclav Slim suggests that one particular metric, while not perfect, might be a good way to determine quality of life. What is that? The infant mortality rate –the number of babies per thousand births that die in the first year of life. Why that number? Because, he says, it is a good proxy f