The follow-up periods of the studies varied between 9 months 72 and 18 years 73. This narrower focus on the quality of life related to an individual’s perceived state of health is called ‘health-related quality of life (HRQoL)’, in the table designated by the first four domains. Since its introduction in the medical literature in the 1960s, the term “quality of life” has become increasingly popular in recent decades. In 1975, quality of life was introduced as a key word in medical literature databases. A PubMed search for studies with quality of life in the title retrieved only 0 to 1 articles/year in the 1960s, but this number has grown to almost 4,000 references in 2013 alone (search performed on May 4, 2014).
World Happiness Report
The arrows in Figure 3 represent the hypothesized linkages between the dimensions. General health perceptions represent an integration of all the previous health concepts plus others, such as mental health. Overall QOL is described as the discrepancy between a person’s expectations or hopes and his or her present experiences. In this model, general health (HRQOL) is a determinant of overall QOL or SWB. Academic interest in quality of life grew after World War II, when there was increasing awareness and recognition of social inequalities.
Standard of Living
The country’s economy is focused on banking and other financial services, making it a high-income nation. The country’s economic growth is primarily due to pharmaceuticals, energy, and services, with a large percentage of the population in the public sector. It considers factors such as healthcare professionals, equipment, staff, doctors, costs, infrastructure, services, and accessibility. If a job provides time to enjoy life but leaves the worker too tired, injured, stressed out, or otherwise unable to enjoy their earnings, it subtracts from quality of life.
Links to NCBI Databases
Some primary indicators of quality of life include sufficient income, job satisfaction, decent housing, access to high-quality education, a reasonable life-work balance, rewarding personal relationships, and access to cultural and leisure activities. The country ranks highly in healthcare, cost of living, and purchasing power. The country’s real GDP in 2023 was $428.4 billion, with services making up 76% of GDP. HRQL research helps people understand how health, disease and treatment impact quality of life. Using this definition, the World Bank works towards improving quality of life through the stated goal of lowering poverty and helping people afford a better quality of life. The Social Progress Index measures the extent to which countries provide for the social and environmental needs of their citizens.
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Factors such as life expectancy, the inflation rate, or the number of paid vacation days people receive each year are also included. A total of 4175 articles were quality of life definition identified from the systematic database search, and six additional articles were found via searching the reference list of included articles (Fig. 1). After title and abstract screening, 3058 articles were excluded and the full-text of the remaining 82 articles were evaluated for eligibility. Excluded articles with reasons for exclusion are presented in Supplementary Table S5, Additional File 1. Moreover, three articles from additional search were also added in this review. Therefore, a total of forty-seven (47) articles were included in this systematic review.
Together, we are creating a future in which patient perspective is integral to health research, care and policy. This facet concerns a person’s urge and desire for sex, and the extent to which the person is able to express and enjoy his/her sexual desire appropriately. Items regarding sexual activity, however, enquire only about sex drive, sexual expression and sexual fulfilment, with other forms of physical intimacy being covered elsewhere. Its economy is derived from oil, yet it has a relatively small GDP per capita of $23,295. These are the top seven countries with the best quality of life as ranked by Numbeo’s Quality of Life Index as of mid-2024.
While some are personal preferences, these factors shape a person’s overall satisfaction with life. One measure of standard of living is the Human Development Index (HDI), which has been used by the United Nations since 1990. It considers life expectancy at birth, expected years of schooling, mean years of schooling, and gross national income per capita to measure a country’s level of development.
Readers should not take the term “quality of life” for granted, but should inspect the topic of the study from the actual measures used. Quality of life can be influenced by many factors, such as access to healthcare, education, personal freedom, and social connections. Factors like workplace conditions, equality, freedom of movement, the right to fair pay, and leisure can also be included.
Luxembourg is a small country in Western Europe with a population of 671,254. It is an important financial center with a strong banking sector, making it an extremely wealthy nation, with a GDP per capita of $128,259 in 2023; one of the highest in the world. Quality of Life is a highly subjective measure of happiness that is an important component of many financial decisions. Andy Smith is a Certified Financial Planner (CFP®), licensed realtor and educator with over 35 years of diverse financial management experience. He is an expert on personal finance, corporate finance and real estate and has assisted thousands of clients in meeting their financial goals over his career.
- Two widely known measures of livability are the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Where-to-be-born Index and Mercer’s Quality of Living Reports.
- The United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948, provides an excellent list of factors that can be considered in evaluating quality of life.
- The term quality of life is also used by politicians and economists to measure the livability of a given city or nation.
- The distinction between HRQOL and SWB made by Fuhrer et al10 is one attempt to clarify what QOL should encompass.
- This approach is meaningful as individuals are typically coming to a health care provider to address or minimize the consequences of a disease state.
- The arrows in Figure 3 represent the hypothesized linkages between the dimensions.
- Some specify multiple domains (1, 3, 6, 7), and others refer to a more global judgment (2, 4, 5, 8).
- HC was the independent assessor, also completing all data screening, extraction and quality assessment.
- A shift occurs with the importance of QoL in some areas.4-6 Specifically, QoL is given greater priority in fields that disease is advanced or terminal.
- The country’s economic growth is primarily due to pharmaceuticals, energy, and services, with a large percentage of the population in the public sector.
- Excluded articles with reasons for exclusion are presented in Supplementary Table S5, Additional File 1.
Lifestyle change is difficult, and many times changes suggested by health care providers can have a negative emotional response. For example, dietary changes intended to promote health have been shown to worsen mood.24 Little research is conducted on this issue, and more information is needed to better understand when treatments have a negative impact on patients. Until this is better understood, the consideration of not only physical but psychological and social well-being outcomes is critical when providing care. This review included a variety of different QoL measures and half of the included studies (24 studies) measured QoL using the Short Form 36 (SF-36) (Tables 1 and 2).
Therefore, caution should be taken with the interpretation of the overall effect estimates. Moreover, since the numbers of studies included in each meta-analysis were fewer than 10 studies, the results of funnel plots or Egger’s test should also be interpreted with caution. Of particular interest here, it has commonly been reported that gender differences exist in QoL and women of all age groups have lower QoL than their male counterparts 86,87,88,89,90. However, in this review, it was not possible to perform statistical pooling by gender and age groups due to the different reporting strategies of the reviewed studies. Finally, it is important to consider that although studies of mortality are not directly affected by reverse causation, individuals with severely declining health prior to death, would likely report a decreased HRQoL.
However, even labels of scales are only rough indicators, and it is by no means guaranteed that one mobility scale is comparable to another mobility scale. The development of the SCI-Functional Index48 with internally homogenous item banks for ambulation, basic mobility, hand function, and other aspects of functioning is a good example of this approach. The drawback of course is that it might increase the number of outcome scores in a QOL study to infinite.
