Scientific context and motivation
During the past 20 years, Romania has passed through a difficult transition that, unexpectedly, led to the current economic and social crisis. While in the early 90’s expectations were high that the country will soon reach a satisfactory level of living for its citizens, the path of transformation proved to be intricate and strenuous. The lives of Romanians transformed tremendously along with the transformation of economic, social and political structures.
However, quality of life in Romania generally remained at a very modest level for the majority of population, while also going through ups and downs. Moreover, new phenomena were born like social polarization at societal level and increasing inequalities between social groups. To a traditional egalitarian society, these were especially problematic. Discontent and disappointment vastly grew among population.
Quality of life research is a major scientific paradigm that allows scientists, policy makers and eventually lay public to understand and reflect upon the circumstances of peoples’ lives as well as societies’ structural conditions. The well being in modern society is at the core of quality of life approach. One of the most influential and debated recent works, the “Stiglitz report” (Stiglitz et al. 2009) gave a new impetus to the well being approach. Although mostly written by economists, the report recognized the crucial importance of quality of life approach in measuring social progress. The Stiglitz report came out in late 2009, in a moment when the crisis of the world economy had revealed the flaws in the measurement of economic growth. It is very likely that the principles and the recommendations laid out in this paper will influence in the short and long term the scientific approach to the measurement of social progress as well as the practices of policy makers in the field. The paper marks a shift in the measurement system from the production oriented measures of economic growth to broader measures of social progress which are based on peoples’ well being.
In the quality of life paradigm, the emphasis on subjective measures has been for more than 5 decades a major concern. With the Stiglitz report, the legitimacy of the approach was once more confirmed. The report advocates a shift of emphasis from a “production-oriented” measurement system to one focused on the well-being of current and future generations. This marks a very broad awareness of the importance of quality of life in modern society.
In Romania, a country still struggling to reach a satisfactory level of living for its citizens, the importance of such an approach is even more crucial.
Objectives
The general objective of the project is to analyse the quality of life in Romania over the entire transition period 1990-2010, in a European comparative perspective and with emphasis on highlighting the social inequalities that were born and deepened during the twenty year period. This would be the first attempt to understand such an extensive period in the social history of the country with the main use of quality of life data. It will enable a unique view of peoples’ lives and society development in the recent past. Monitoring social change is a major goal of social research mostly undertaken in this field by the Eurobarometer series and EQLS. However, images of peoples’ lives and societies are currently only partial due to data gathering limitations (data available on a limited number of years, changing in indicators, in questions format etc). Moreover, no work so far concentrated on one country in a comparative perspective as an exemplary case of transformation country. This project will allow a comprehensive view of Romanian society mostly viewed through the eyes of its citizens and complemented with information on social structures.
The specific objectives of the project are:
1. To analyse each major domain of quality of life: standard of living, education, health, work, family, subjective well being, housing, leisure, quality of society. Currently, an extensive literature concentrates on life spheres, their specific importance and their relative contribution to quality of life. The project will build on existing experience and literature trying to understand the specific situation of Romania in time and in comparison to other European countries. We will try to answer questions like: Why standard of living is still the major contributor to quality of life in Romania and not in other similar countries, like Bulgaria? (Sandu, 2008) What does the data say about the social development of the country? Why quality of society continues to remain one of the weakest dimensions of quality of life? (Marginean et al, 2006)
2. To explain quality of life in relation to structural conditions of Romanian society: consolidation of democracy, corruption, institutional quality. The project will use statistical data and social reporting data to correlate with quality of life. The project will use a unique approach, starting with quality of life as experienced by people (using subjective data) and will go more in depth by explaining every aspect in relation to societal, structural aspects of quality of life.
3. To compare quality of life in Romania to that in Eastern and Western European countries. While comparisons have been the focus of literature especially during the past ten years, analysis either remained at the level of main aspects of quality of life (Marginean et al. 2006) or only included Romania in larger groups of countries (Alber et al. 2007) while leaving unexplained the key phenomena that triggered the specific setup of the quality of life in the country. The project will try to compare Romania with meaningful groups of countries (to be established during research) both Eastern and Western European countries, while emphasizing the explanatory component of similarities and differences.
4. To analyse social inequalities in each domain of life (standard of living, education, health, work, family, subjective well being, housing, leisure, quality of society) and highlight vulnerable groups. Literature so far drew attention to the existence of inequalities and the steady trend of deepening inequalities mainly in regard to incomes but also in what regards education, health, housing and even leisure. Romania has a particular setup of inequalities in comparison to other countries (Marginean et al. 2006, Marginean and Precupetu, 2008). The project will concentrate on this specific setup trying to understand the key set of connections in this regard.
5. To analyse security/insecurity aspects of quality of life. The concepts of security/insecurity are relatively new in the quality of life field and refers mainly to the job dimension. However, lately, discussions in the scientific community converged towards the idea that security could comprise more than one dimension, including incomes, job, and housing. The recent crisis brought up the issue of people feeling secure about their general standards of living. A certain precariousness of living conditions characterizes some social groups as they move in and out of poverty. In Romania, the many changes during the past twenty years impacted heavily on large social groups by creating an obvious condition of precariousness and insecurity about their life circumstances. The project explores this idea by trying to analyse the existence of such a distinctive dimension of quality of life based on existing indicators. The idea is very new and was not explored as such in social science and brings an innovation component to the project.
6. To create an index of global quality of life that makes possible comparisons over time, taking into consideration the experience in the field. The index will be constructed with the purpose of testing it and discussing it in the scientific community before considering it as a reliable measure that can be used in assessing quality of life and monitoring change. While it is still debated in the literature if such an index is possible and meaningful, we will try to test it carefully while building on existing experiences.
Method and approach
The project builds on the existing experience and knowledge in the field of quality of life and goes beyond it by carrying out a more complete, refined and comprehensive analysis. It is an endeavour to describe and explain twenty years of social, economic and political transformation of Romania through quality of life data. While the main emphasis is on peoples’ views of their quality of life, the project also builds on structural conditions of Romanian society. The approach of the project is that of the quality of life paradigm.
The specific approach is the predominant bottom-up method that considers the relative contribution of each domain of life quality to the global quality of life.
The longitudinal analysis of each major quality of life domain will be undertaken in order to highlight stability and change in quality of life data and to further understand its significance for peoples’ lives and Romanian society in general. The project will make use of a unique data series, (Quality of Life Diagnosis 1990-2010) and a three year panel data that will allow a specific analysis of stability and change in quality of life data. Moreover, data provide by EQLS and the Eurobarometer series will be used.
The project will make use of bivariate, multivariate analysis of data and structural equation modelling in order to describe and explain the dynamics of quality of life during the twenty year period under scrutiny. The indicators include, besides quality of life data indicators that provide information in each domain analysed coming from various sources: statistical data, social reporting data.
Each domain will be treated in its own respect as well as in relation to quality of life in general. In regard to education, for example, the domain will be analysed by using quality of life indicators that comprise peoples’ evaluations and satisfactions in regard to education as well as various educational indicators. The main emphasis will be on perceptions and evaluations of education which will be related to the more objective setup of education. The picture will be complemented and explained by using indicators measuring inputs of education (e.g. school enrolment, educational expenditures and school resources), throughputs and outputs (e.g. graduation rates, completed years of schooling, standardized test-measures of people’s achievements in terms of literacy and numeracy).
Moreover, the contribution of education to quality of life will be analysed. Furthermore, inequalities in this field will be carefully scrutinized for Romania and compared, where possible, to those in other European countries. This is especially important for the practical implications of the project. Romania seems to be characterized by several major lines of division in the field of education: large inequalities in performance between schools in rural and urban, between schools in various communities, while combining excellence for many students that reach university education with widespread under-achievement for a large number of youth, mainly from disadvantaged households. This has many implications when trying to assess general quality of life and when trying to put in place various policies.
Calendar
October 2011- October 2014
Funding
The project is funded through a grant of the Romanian National Authority for Scientific Research, CNCS – UEFISCDI, project number PN-II-RU-TE-2011-3-0104, total funding 596 200lei.
