Question

What is Physical Quality of Life? What are the aspects included in it?

Answer 1

Physical Quality of Life:

• Physical quality of life in human beings depends on the different types of goods and services that a person consumes over a period of time.
• The ‘standard of consumption’ refers to the consumption of goods and services by a person or group of people during a given period of time.

The consumption includes:

1. Consumption of food, fuel and other non-durable goods
2. Consumption of durable and semi durable goods
3. Consumption of service goods/use of services

• The standard of consumption or say the standard of living determines the physical quality of life.
• If the living standard of the people goes up, it can be said that physical quality of life has gone up.
  Aspects included in the Physical Quality of Life:
• The composition of goods and services consumed by an individual during a period of one year determines the physical quality of life.

Following are the determinants included in the list of goods and services:

1. Food (Proportion of calories, protein and fats)
2. Health and medical services (Proportion of doctor to population)
3. Housing and clothing (Number of rooms in a house, average number of people living in each room, etc.)
4. Education and entertainment (percentage of population getting primary secondary, education, entertainment facilities like TV, theatre, etc.)
5. Transport, communication and information services (the extent of road, railway lines, number of telephones per capita.)
6. Energy (Per capita energy consumption)
7. Population having access to pure drinking water
8. Average life expectancy
9. Infant mortality rate
10. Drainage facility

If there is an improvement in these 10 aspects or determinants then we can say that there is improvement in the physical quality of human life.

On the contrary, if improvement has not taken place then these determinants can be studied and it can be analyzed as to where improvement is needed and remedial measure to be adopted to increase the rate of development.

Every indicator can be relatively expressed. The value of each indicator is equally expressed on a scale of 0 to 100.

• The indicator which has the highest value is given 100 points.
• Note that developed countries give more importance to improve the physical quality of life.