Disparities regarding life quality in Central and Eastern European Countries

Danacica, Daniela-Emanuela and Babucea, Ana-Gabriela and Caruntu, Constantin (2006): Disparities regarding life quality in Central and Eastern European Countries. Published in: CD Proceedings International Workshop Models in Economics (2007)

Abstract

The analysis of social indicators and the analysis of life quality are very important in order to know, in time, the changes of the main social and economic phenomena that characterize a society. To monitor the social system is a priority of modern societies because it helps to identify in time the changes of unemployment main aspects, health of population, person’s level of security, educational level, life satisfaction, and even the subjective part of life quality. The increase of life quality has to be a purpose of social and economic politics. Taking into consideration the progress and especially the life standard attained by the developed countries of the world, each country that presents deficiencies in social politics has to identify the best measures as an answer to the existing social needs. This research aims to study the disparities regarding life quality in the following Central and Eastern European Countries: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Austria, Latvia, Lithuania, FYR Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Moldavia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Serbia and Montenegro, Turkey, Ukraine, Russia, Belarus. The paper is structured as it follows: (1) introduction, (2) description of variables, (3) analysis of life quality in the Central and Eastern European Countries and (4) conclusion. The methodological approach is based on cluster analysis and the variables were selected taking into account theoretical, conceptual and practical reasons, trying to be relevant for the investigated problems and in straight connection with the analysis objectives. We try also to balance the number of the socio-economic demographic variables with the variables of the living level. From the analysis, in both cases, (with four or two groups), the revealed image is the same. There is a class of countries with a high level of life quality, characterized by a high socio-economic standard, and consequently good life conditions, and a class made of low socio-economic standard countries with low GDP, due to the inefficiency of economical politics or to the hell of civil wars and with big problems regarding corruption, civil and political liberties, life satisfaction, infant mortality and unemployment. This research offers a better understanding of macroeconomics politics effects that are promoted at the level of this region as well as their improvement.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: cluster analysis, life quality, matrix, dendrogram, Ward algorithm
• Subjects: B - History of Economic Thought, Methodology, and Heterodox Approaches > B4 - Economic Methodology > B40 - General; C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods > C4 - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics > C40 - General

References

Aldenderfer, M. S. & Blashfield, R. K. (1984). Cluster Analysis, Newbury Park: Sage Publications. Bacescu, M., Bacescu-Carbunaru, A.(1997), Macroeconomics, Editura Economica, Bucharest. Field, A. (2000). Discovering Statistics using SPSS for Windows: Advanced Tehniques for Beginner, London: Sage. Greene, H., W. (1993). Econometric Analysis, Macmillan Publishing Company: New York. Gujarati, R., N. (1995). Basic Econometrics, 3rd ed., New York: Mc. Graw-Hill. Hoel, P. G., Port, S. C. and Stone, C. J. (1971). Introduction to Statistical Theory. New York: Houghton Mifflin. Yule, G. U. and Kendall, M. G., (1950). An Introduction to the Theory of Statistics, 14th ed., rev. and enl. New York: Hafner. Manly, B.F.J. (1995). Multivariate Statistical Methods. 2nd ed., repr.: a primer. London: Chapman& Hall. Mucha, H.J. and Sofyan H. (2003). Cluster Analysis, http://www.xplore-stat.de/tutorials/clustnode3.html Stephens, L.J. (2004): Advanced statistics. London: Mc Grow-Hill. http://hdr.undp.org/statistics/data/countries.cfm http://www.imf.org http://www.worldbank.org http://www.worldfactsandfigures.com/gdp_country_desc.php http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/dyb/dyb2.htm http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/ http://www1.eur.nl/fsw/happiness/hap_nat/findingreports/RankReport2004-1c.htm 12