From Dissonance to Well-Being and Adaption? Quality of Life in Switzerland Over the Past Decades

Suter, Christian; Iglesias, Katia; Moussa, Jehane Simona

doi:10.1007/978-94-017-9178-6_31

Cited by 4 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…The civil status and especially those married or in a relationship are known to report higher levels of subjective well-being whereas divorced and separated individuals tend to report lower levels of subjective well-being (Ambrey & Fleming 2014;Blanchflower & Oswald 2005). Status on the labor market is also known as an important determinant of the subjective well-being, in fact, being unemployed is importantly correlated with lower levels of well-being (Oesch & Lipps 2012;Suter et al 2015). According to Michalos (2008), the religious status has almost no impact.…”

Section: Subjective Well-beingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For several years now, one can find a plethora of indexes to rank countries in terms of well-being, quality of life and social or economic progress such as the Better Life Index, the Human Development Index, the Progress Index and many more (see Suter et al 2015). In fact, the emergence of many indicators or indices comes from the need to both evaluate and compare countries in the frame of more and more complex economies.…”

Section: Quality Of Lifementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Following the Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi's report, we know that for measuring the quality of a society, one must go beyond unique, objective economic indicators and should include in the analyse subjective measurements (Stiglitz et al 2009). Switzerland generally stands in the top five and if not in the top ten countries when it comes to quality of life or subjective well-being (Suter et al 2015). However, only few researches have investigated the evolution of subjective well-being and its issues, Quality of life is a holistic concept that considers all important dimensions for one's life, that is to say, opportunities that a society is giving to individuals as well as one's own life circumstances.…”

Section: Quality Of Lifementioning

confidence: 99%

“…In international comparison, Switzerland is in a good position among several dimensions of quality of life such as health, life expectancy, "happiness", but also in terms of Gross National Product (Suter et al 2015, Budowski & Scherpenzeel 2005, Veenhoven 2013). However, important social inequalities are persistent and are widening for several individuals or households, with regards to their social strata, and thus affecting their overall quality of life and subjective well-being (Zimmermann & Weiss 2004).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Focusing our research on Switzerland one could be surprised that in such high-income country, it is worth the research. It is true that Switzerland is generally ranking in the top five of various indices such as the World Happiness Report (see Suter et al 2015). However, poor people have always existed as well as those experiencing economic vulnerability without being poor.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Living on the Edge. Analyzing Economic Vulnerability and Quality of Life in Switzerland in the Early 2000's

Simona¹

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This thesis focuses on the concept of economic vulnerability and mainly on the analysis of a group, or a specific socio-economic position of the population, people vulnerable to poverty. Indeed, scientific literature has extensively investigated people in poverty or those with the highest concentration of wealth, but those who suffer to maintain decent living conditions, without any help from the welfare state, are often overlooked by research. This thesis analyzes the effects of this socio-economic position on two concepts: firstly, the subjective well-being and secondly, the quality of life in times of crisis.The first part of this thesis explores the issue of identifying those who are vulnerable to poverty. The emphasis is placed on the various options available to researchers to identify, using a quantitative approach, people vulnerable to poverty and thus, to better target the group that may face difficulties in maintaining decent living conditions. The first article of the thesis compares four indicators which are poverty, precariousness, deprivation and vulnerability in order to show the different possibilities that exist to identify people belonging to this specific group.The second part of the thesis combines two approaches that have never been jointly studied, the vulnerability to poverty and the subjective well-being. Indeed, the objective is to assess whether the subjective well-being of our interest group is different or similar to those defined as being in poverty and who are then recognized as such by the society as a whole.Finally, in the third and last part of this thesis, our attention shifts towards a set of vulnerable groups defined as such by either the scientific community or public policies, and we assess the impacts of the economic crises of the early 2000s on four quality of life indicators. This third article combines subjective and objective indicators and gives a clear overview on how vulnerable groups in Switzerland fared during the last two consecutive economic downturns.The database used for the analyses in this thesis is the Swiss Household Panel (SHP). This longitudinal database started in 2000 and contains rich information, both objective and subjective, about households living in Switzerland. Each of the three articles follows its own methodology. The first article compares four indicators and their methodological construction, in the perspective to use them to identify people vulnerable to poverty. The second paper first uses the vulnerability to poverty method to define the analysis group and then, the subjective well-being is estimated using a linear regression model (OLS). Finally, the third paper uses different models (binary regressions, multilevel models, fixed-effects and random effects) to estimate which vulnerable groups were affected by economic crises, but also whether there is a recurrent effect following these two crises close in time, on four quality of life indicators (two subjective and two objective).The results show that there are different possibilities for i...

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Section: Subjective Well-beingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Quality Of Lifementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Quality Of Lifementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Living on the Edge. Analyzing Economic Vulnerability and Quality of Life in Switzerland in the Early 2000's

Simona¹

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Wealth Trends in the United States During the Great Recession and Recovery, 2001–2016

Wolff

2019

Social Indicators Research Series

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From One Recession to Another: Longitudinal Impacts on the Quality of Life of Vulnerable Groups

Simona-Moussa

Ravazzini

2018

Soc Indic Res

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At the beginning of the 2000s, Switzerland went through two global recessions: the Dotcom crisis and the Great Recession. Even though Switzerland experienced milder effects compared to its European neighbours, the Swiss unemployment rate increased considerably compared to its status quo. This paper explores the resilience of vulnerable groups to these economic downturns using both objective (income poverty and material deprivation) and subjective (wellbeing and satisfaction with the financial situation) indicators of quality of life. To analyse how quality of life evolved since the early 2000s, we use a longitudinal database: the Swiss Household Panel. Studying both objective and subjective indicators, results suggest that the dot-com crisis had a stronger negative effect than the Great Recession on vulnerable groups. This was particularly true for single parents and large families. Disadvantaged groups during the first crisis reacted in different ways during the second crisis. Some groups (the unemployed, the low-educated and the solo self-employed) experienced some scarring effects sometimes only according to objective indicators; others were resilient and continued with their normal trends (migrants and the young), whereas the most strongly affected groups during the first crisis (single parents and large families) registered an improvement in their conditions in the second crisis. These results point to a combination of subjective and objective indicators to evaluate the effects of recurrent crises on vulnerable groups.

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From Dissonance to Well-Being and Adaption? Quality of Life in Switzerland Over the Past Decades

Cited by 4 publications

References 17 publications

Living on the Edge. Analyzing Economic Vulnerability and Quality of Life in Switzerland in the Early 2000's

Living on the Edge. Analyzing Economic Vulnerability and Quality of Life in Switzerland in the Early 2000's

Wealth Trends in the United States During the Great Recession and Recovery, 2001–2016

From One Recession to Another: Longitudinal Impacts on the Quality of Life of Vulnerable Groups

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