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Sources, definitions and bibliography

Quality of life and well-being often go hand in hand

Insee Première N°1428 - February 2013

Sources

The quality of life survey conducted by INSEE in May 2011 has resulted in an examination - for the first time - of most of the quality of life indicators defined in the Stiglitz, Sen, Fitoussi report (bibliography).

10,000 people aged 18 or over were contacted by mail and asked to respond to an online questionnaire. Where necessary they received a reminder by post with a paper questionnaire to return by post. No questions were asked about family links within the dwelling. The "demographic composition of the household" variable describes the number of adults and minors living in the dwelling as defined by the tax authorities. In particular, it is not known whether two unmarried adults (or living in civil union) who cohabit in the same dwelling form a de facto couple.

The people surveyed were not asked about their income : this data corresponds to the income declared to the tax authorities, i.e. income that does not include non-taxable benefits (family allowances, etc.). The income used here represents the total fiscal income of the persons in the dwelling, related to the number of consumption units that they comprise (definitions).

In 2011, France Portrait Social presented a study on an analogous theme using the French version of EU-SILC (European Survey on Income and Living Conditions) of 2010 (bibliography). The survey used here provides indications on a broader range of quality of life indicators than the EU-SILC, in particular the quality of social links, emotional well-being, insecurities, psychosocial risks at work, the environment, and the perceived quality of society. However, the EU-SILC had a larger sample. While the point is not to interpret the difference in average satisfaction level between the study presented here and that of France Portrait Social 2011, there are numerous similarities in terms of results :

- material living conditions and health issues respectively have a very negative and a negative influence on well-being ;

- the same is true of other indicators that were partially included in the EU-SILC : unemployed status (component of insecurity), and working conditions (similar to psychosocial risks) ;

- once the quality of life indicators have been taken into account, the positive role played by income fades, although it does remain at the two ends of the resources scale ;

- the role played by age is very sensitive to specification and the contrasts between age groups differ according to this specification ;

- lastly, average well-being increases with qualifications in both sources. However, depending on the quality of life variables and other socio-demographic variables, and irrespective of specification variants, a high level of qualification has a positive influence on well-being in the quality of life survey whereas it plays a negative role in the EU-SILC. This point of divergence can perhaps be ascribed to the way the data were collected, and will have to be closely addressed in forthcoming studies.

Definitions

Income per consumption unit

The income taken into consideration in the study is the income tax per consumption unit. In a given dwelling, the amount of income tax declared to the tax authorities is calculated according to the number of taxable households resident in the dwelling. This sum is then divided by the number of consumption units (CU), determined as follows : - the first adult occupant is counted as 1 CU ; - any other occupant aged 14 or over accounts for 0.5 CU ; - each child occupant under the age of 14 accounts for 0.3 CU. In total each person of the same household will have the same income per consumption unit.

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Bibliography