Access to micro and informal loans: evaluating the impact on the quality of life of poor females in South Africa
Since the early 1980s, many governments have investigated the possibility of utilising access to microloans, as a pathway to grow economies out of unemployment and thereby improve people’s quality of life. Studies that have previously investigated the impact of microloans, found a positive relationship to quality of life. Unfortunately, these studies mainly measure quality of […]
Quality of life: validation of an instrument and analysis of relationships between dimensions
Background The conventional approach to measuring quality of life was centred on the use of income measures such as GDP. There has, however, been growing acceptance of the limitations of this approach and of the need for a more multifaceted measure of quality of life. For example, the Report by the Commission on the Measurement […]
Access to micro – and informal loans: evaluating the impact on the quality of life of poor females in South Africa
Background: Since the early 1980s, many governments have investigated the possibility of utilising access to microloans as a pathway to grow economies out of unemployment and thereby improve people’s quality of life. Studies that have previously investigated the impact of microloans found a positive relationship to quality of life. Unfortunately, these studies mainly measure quality […]
Quality of life: Validation of an instrument and analysis of relationships between domains
Quality of life (QoL) is now widely recognised as a multidimensional concept. This study validates an instrument to measure multidimensional QoL, and investigates the relationships between the domains thereof. The domains analysed are: health, housing and infrastructure, socio-economic status, social relationships, governance and safety. We utilise a rich household-level dataset collected by the GCRO on […]
Regional disparities in income-independent quality of life in South Africa: convergence or divergence?
The purpose of this study is to add to the empirical literature regarding quality of life convergence dynamics. It achieves this by analysing and comparing income and income-independent quality of life (IIQoL) convergence dynamics across South Africa’s 234 municipalities for the period 1996-2014. The study tested for convergence and utilised dynamic panel methods (systems GMM). […]
Non-Economic Quality of Life and Population Density in South Africa
The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between population density and non-economic quality of life. Popular opinion has generally been that population density can be seen as beneficial for economic growth, as it allows for greater productivity, greater incomes and can be translated into higher levels of quality of life. Recently though, […]
Construction and analysis of a composite quality of life index for a region of South Africa
This study employs a novel approach to measure and analyse quality of life in the Gauteng City-Region of South Africa. A comprehensive composite index is constructed. Comparing the quality of life of different groups, groups such as Africans, residents in urban informal settlements and females scoring relatively low. The weighting of the dimensions of quality […]
The Good African Society Index
This paper constructs a Good Society Index for 45 African countries, termed the Good African Society Index (GASI). The GASI consists of nine main indexes: (i) economic sustainability, (ii) democracy and freedom, (iii) child well-being, (iv) environment and infrastructure, (v) safety and security, (vi) health and health systems, (vii) integrity and justice, (viii) education, and […]
The Good African Society Index
This paper constructs a Good Society Index for 45 African countries, termed the Good African Society Index (GASI). The GASI consists of nine main indexes: (i) economic sustainability, (ii) democracy and freedom, (iii) child well-being, (iv) environment and infrastructure, (v) safety and security, (vi) health and health systems, (vii) integrity and justice, (viii) education, and […]
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