About the project

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.

Calendar

October 2011- October 2014

Funding

The project is funded through a grant of the Romanian National Authority for Scientific Research, CNCS – UEFISCDI, contract number 69 ⁄ 05/10/2011, project number PN-II-RU-TE-2011-3-0104.