Physical Quality of Life – PQL :
- The objective of ED is to improve the standard of living of the people. So, Physical Quality of Life is accepted as an indicator of ED.
- Consumption or living standards is identified as 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.
- To determine the physical quality of life, the following determinants are included :
- Food
- Health and Medical services
- Housing and clothing;
- Education and entertainment;
- Transport, communication and information services
- Energy
- Drinking water
- Average life expectancy
- Infant mortality rate and
- Drainage facility.
- If there is improvement in the above determinants it can be said that there is improvement in the physical quality of human life.
- Developed countries give more importance for the improvement of the physical quality of life.
Physical Quality Life Index – PQLI:
- Davis Morris presented the Physical Quality Life Index.
- In PQLI betterment of physical quality life of human beings is considered as Economic development.
- The level of PQLI determines the level of Economic development. Higher is PQLI, more is the development of a country.
- The three standard to measure the PQLI are :
- Extent of Education
- Life expectancy and
- Infant Mortality Rate – IMR.
- Thus, PQLI = Extent of education + life expectancy + Infant mortality rate.
- Increase in the extent of education shows the rise in the welfare of an individual. Hence, it is the important standard of physical quality life.
- Rise in life expectancy is the reflection of rise in the medical services of the country.
- The fall in infant mortality rate, shows health care services of the country is good.
PQLI is formed as follows ;
- PQLI is always between 0 and 100.
- PQLI can be used to compare two states within the country or two different countries.
- Higher the PQLI, more is the Economic development and lower the PQLI. lesser is the Economic development.
- PQLI closer to 100, better is the performance of all three standards and PQLI closer to zero, bad is the performance of all three standards.
- Thus, PQLI is the indicator of economic development superior to the per capita income.
Limitations of PQLI:
- It is not proper to include on three aspects in calculating PQLI. It is necessary to include other factors also to the existing ones.
- PQLI is an average. So, decisions cannot be made on the basis of averages.
- It is not right to give equal weightage to all standards of PQLI.
- Growth of income has been ignored in PQLI.
