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Quality of Life, Looking for a Definition

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Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research

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Introduction

Quality of Life (QoL) is a relatively new concept, having appeared only at the end of the 1960s; since then, its growth as a research issue has been exponential. QoL emerged from two different contexts: socio-political and biomedical. At that time, socio-economic measures were the main indicators for assessing the growth and development of populations and individuals. As Wilson (1968) stated, there were increasing signs of discontent with the continued use of traditional measures of economic, political, and social progress: per capita income and gross national product were not conceptually designed to measure changes in a global political and socio-economic environment that was pursuing a “new frontier.” Therefore, it was necessary to develop a set of social indicators for assessing the quality of life of a given population in relation to important policy decisions, and hence the concept of social indicators as aggregate or representative welfare measures: individual...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychobiology, Universidad Europea de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Marta Santacreu

  2. Department of Psychobiology and Health, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Rocío Fernández-Ballesteros

Authors
  1. Marta Santacreu
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  2. Rocío Fernández-Ballesteros
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Marta Santacreu .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Scienze Statistiche, Sapienza Università di Roma, Roma, Roma, Italy

    Filomena Maggino

Section Editor information

  1. Department of Social Science, University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy

    Maria Gabriella Grassia

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Santacreu, M., Fernández-Ballesteros, R. (2023). Quality of Life, Looking for a Definition. In: Maggino, F. (eds) Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17299-1_3787

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