The quality of life: an international comparison based on ordinal measures

Abstract

This paper presents an international comparison of the quality of life based on two ordinal measures, namely, the Borda and Copeland scores. The data on 11 indicators/attributes of well-being available for 109 countries are used to compute these measures. The study reveals that both the measures provide very similar world ranking of the quality of life. The OECD block is seen of the top and the Sub-Saharan African countries at the bottom of the world ranking. Most of the East European and Latin American countries are in the second and third quintiles, some Asian countries such as Singapore, Korea and Malaysia are in the second quintile and most Mother Asian countries are in the fourth and fifth quintiles of world ranking.