Measurement of Objective life Quality in the Context of Economically Developed Countries’ Quantification

In the last decades, the economic performance in the countries is very often compared to social development of a society. In this field, there exists a long-term disharmony between a rate of economic growth that is measured by the outputs and a rate of GDP growth and life quality and life conditions of citizens that are measured by different indices. There exist many factors that influence the objective life quality. The fundamental life conditions that may be compared are for instance availability of health care services and education, average wages, quality of natural environment, etc. The use of some indicators is often connected with methodological issues, such as in case of a corruption rate, setting of a legal system, functioning of democratic principles in a country, etc. In the social science, there prevails an opinion that a level of GDP is not automatically reflected into daily lives of people or that a rise of GDP is not linearly connected with a rise of a living standard and a better life of individuals. This article reflects on these aspects. The theoretical part presents a description of the most well-know indices that are used to evaluate life quality at the macro-regional level. The analytical part focuses on quantification of life quality by means of a composite index of a human development (Human Development Index), which is annually published in Human Development Report within the United Nations Development Programme(UNDP) since 1990. There was evaluated a development of values of the HDI index in Slovakia over the last ten years and compared with a development in the countries of the EU on the basis of available data. The conclusion of the paper is devoted to a specification of methodological issues that are related to the HDI index application. These issues are partially eliminated by a complementary use of other indices to assess an objective life quality, which are recommended by the OSN initiatives that will conclude a complex of solved issues in the article.