New country groupings can help better target policymaking

Expansion of EU challenges policymakers

Quality of life is becoming an increasingly important focus of policymaking, particularly given the growing interest at European level in moving beyond GDP as the sole measure of progress.

Quality of life encompasses a number of different dimensions, including standard of living, access to education and employment, health, family, social and political participation, and subjective well-being. Surveys such as Eurofound’s European Quality of Life Survey generate vital data for decision-makers regarding the situation of European citizens.

However, as the EU grows in size and diversity, making sense of the differences and similarities across the Union and gauging the appropriate target countries for particular interventions becomes more complex. Simple binary divisions, such as the ‘new’ Member States versus the EU15, have quickly become outdated, creating the need for classifications that better capture reality.

New approaches can help 

A recent Eurofound report, Developing a country typology for analysing quality of life in Europe, seeks to do just that, more effectively identifying the issues facing countries, and so enabling more effective responses. An approach that groups countries based on the nature of their dominant quality of life issues can form a useful guide to where policy attention is most needed.

In some countries, unemployment is a pressing problem. In others, a low standard of living (even among those employed) remains an urgent issue. As well as helping identify the policy area where attention is most urgent, a grouping of countries on the basis of a multidimensional quality of life perspective allows the interdependence of the dimensions to be assessed and – in turn – a more appropriate policy response constructed. For instance, if unemployment in a country is strongly associated with low levels of education, then education and training needs to be part of that response.

Grouping countries accurately

For the 34 countries covered in the EQLS 2011–2012 (the 28 EU Member States plus the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Iceland, Kosovo, Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey), the report proposes a sorting of the countries into eight groups; this grouping accurately captures differences in many of key domains of quality of life explored in the survey, such as material deprivation, public service deficits and overall quality of life.

The use of this eight-country grouping is recommended at the most detailed level, where the focus is on the 34 countries and where the greatest precision is desired. When the focus is on the 28 EU Member States, the report recommends using a five-group system. It is also possible to use a three-group system to present results in an overview fashion; however, doing this will result in the loss of some information.

Note: Countries in parentheses are currently not Member States of the EU.