The Quality Of Life (QOL) Metric is an essential tool for the Star Bright initiative. It is a summary of the status of civilization. It allows a quick single measure of where we have been, where we are, and where we are headed. Most importantly it provides a way of ranking risks and opportunities on the basis of greatest to least effect on our quality of life. The graph to the right comes from the current Star Bright Civilization Simulation. In this release the graph can only be controlled from within the simulation. Future interactive versions are planned for this web site.

How is QOL Calculated?

Our quality of life consists of 7 driving factors:

1. Health
2. Financial Status (Income and Wealth)
3. Knowledge (Education)
4. Autonomy (The ability to do what we want to do)
5. Family and Community Involvement
6. The Products and Services We Use
7. Environment

Certainly a long and healthy life is an important characteristic of a life of quality. We are using life expectancy as a measure for overall health. We get historical data by country from ourworldindata.org.

Having the financial resources to provide for ourselves and our families is critical for a quality of life. We use gross national income per capita from the United Nations and gross national wealth from Swiss RE as measures of financial resources.

An education is needed to function within our civilization. There are many sources for this education. The most common and easiest to obtain data is with the formal school system. We use the number of schools years attended as representative of the level of education achieved in a society. (Taken from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/mean-years-of-schooling-long-run).

It is well recognized within psychology that we desire to have control over our lives. We want to be able to do what we want to do. Within the QOL metric we call this autonomy. The data we use comes from Freedom House (https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/2023-03/FIW_2023_50Years_DigitalPDF.pdf). For 50 years they have been accessing the state of democracy in the world. They have established an annual survey where by they assess the level of Political Rights and the Civil Liberties within most countries. We use Civil Liberties as our measure of autonomy.

Our quailty of life is strongly influenced by family, friends, and associates. We are searching for a metric for this. Suggestions would be most appreciated.

The quality of the commercial and government products and services we use have a direct effect on our quality of life. However we do not have a metric for these. Suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

A more detailed discussion of each of these 7 QOL drivers is available by clicking on the list entries above.

Combining the 7 Driving Factors into the QOL Metric

We use the same technique the UN uses in creating its Human Deveopment Index (HDI). They combine health, education, and income per capita. They use a technique referred to as the goal post method. The idea is to declare the goal lies between a minimum value and a maximum value. For a discussion of the technique see https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321268796_Composite_Index_Methods_and_Properties. The index then expresses where one is relative to the goal posts. 0 indicates you are at the minimum. 1 indicates you are at the maximum. A negative number says you are below the minimum goal post value. A number above 1 and you have exceeded the maximum goal post value.

There are many ways to combine driving factor indexes. For our current QOL Metric we took the logrithm of wealth and income since there is a point where increasing income or wealth has little to no effect on the quality of life. We then sum the 7 factors. Thus the QOL can range from 0 to 7.

QOL Foresight

In the sample QOL graph above we extend the historical data into a simple trend line extension. This trendline has, at least, three shortcomings that need to be corrected. 1) It assumes a linear increase in the trendline uncertainty. An exponential increase is more realistic. 2) It assumes no random events. 3) It assumes there is no change in the system dynamics. The plan is to address all three in reverse order as the last one offers the most near term value.

To be specific the above QOL graph does not yet take into account the effects of climate change on our QOL. To do so we need to examine how climate change effects the QOL driving factors. Stay tuned. The next version of the QOL Metric will do so.

After the climate change effect we can move onto another of the risks we face. Any suggestions. To see the list click here.

So What’s the Point

In the sample graph from the Star Bright Civilization Simulation three things are very apparent. 1) There is a very large differnece in the QOL around the globe. This is not a surprise, but look at the rate of change. 2) QOL is increasing nearly everywhere. This is a very hopeful sign. 3) The rate of QOL increase has in recent years has slowed. It is still positive.

When we add the impact of climate change, it seems likely some regions will see a QOL decline. However, we are commited to consider all things. There are several things that will have a positive effect. For example, most of the poorest areas are on the verge of eliminating the worse of poverty. There are strong efforts in place to significantly increase human development opportunties in education and more broadly civil liberties.