QUALITY OF LIFE AS A MIRROR OF WELFARE. INTERNATIONAL COMPARISONS

The article presents an empirical attempt to verify the hypothesis that quality of life is able to reflect the attained welfare. Therefore, examinations are aimed to compare quality of life in few countries, especially selected with use of such criteria as dissimilar level of economic development and unlike range of public choice in order to study whether there are any regularities between social welfare and quality of life either depending on level of development, or regardless the achieved level The empirical analysis consists of three parts. The first one concerns most general indicators of welfare and quality of life like GDP and life satisfaction and is the starting point for further analysis of more complex comparisons of life satisfaction, quality of life index and values of the Sen social welfare function in relation to GDP per capita. The last part concerns comparisons of partial quality of life factors such as health, job security, family relations, and education.