ASSESSMENT OF CHANGES IN THE QUALITY OF LIFE OF EMERGING ECONOMIES IN THE CONTEXT OF DEVELOPED ECONOMIES OF THE EUROPEAN UNION

!e present article has focused on the theoretical and practical aspects of the measurement of quality of life by the quality of life index (IQOL). A special focus of the present article is placed on complexity of quality of life measurement. In the article, an integrated Quality of Life Measurement Model and IQOL are formulated on the basis of theoretical assumptions and synthesis of factors of external and internal environments of quality of life and indicators re"ecting them. !e Quality of Life Measurement Model presented in the article has been empirically tested assessing quality of life in 20 purposefully selected developed and emerging economies of the European Union during the period #om 2005 till 2013. !e newly created IQOL is one of the ambitions to promote the methodological background for business and political actors and improvement of the quality of life in emerging economies.


Introduction
Quality of life with its dynamic and complex nature is becoming an ever more relevant theme a racting more and more discussions. e theory of quality of life formed as a separate research eld and emerged in the discourse of science in Western Europe and North America only in the 1960's. Since then the issues of measurement and improvement of the quality of life of a society, individual social groups, and individuals have been gaining importance, with the aim to identify and solve economic and social problems arising in the society, to set quality of life improvement priorities, and to assess e ectiveness of economic policies.
In spite of a growing interest in the concept and measurement of quality of life, the issue remains di cult and unresolved. A lot of di erent de nitions, their interpretations and di erent measures of quality of life may be found in economic literature. ere is a lack of distinction between the concepts of well-being, quality of life, and living standards, which are o en used as synonyms (Easterlin, 2003;Veenhoven, 1996Veenhoven, , 2000. In the present paper the term quality of life is used in a wide sense, encompassing both macro and micro level factors. In this study the terms well-being and life satisfaction are treated as components of quality of life, which may be measured using objective and subjective indicators belonging to the micro level. Although some researchers (Cummins, 1996;Felce & Perry, 1997;Haas, 1999;Hagerty et al., 2001;Veenhoven, 2000 agree about the complexity of the conception of quality of life, there is no commonly accepted classi cation of factors a ecting quality of life and unanimous opinion concerning economic and other factors determining quality of life. Scientists indicate assumptions on the basis of which quality of life factors may be identi ed and systematized and their interrelationships may be studied (Hagerty et al., 2001). Quality of life remains a contested concept, which is measured in di erent ways: using objective or subjective dimensions, analyzing one or several factors of quality of life, creating composite indices.
Based on these arguments, the aim of this paper is to formulate an integrated model for assessment of quality of life and to test it empirically assessing the quality of life in the emerging EU countries in contrast to developed economies. is paper is structured as follows. e second section of this paper presents analysis of the conceptualization and measurement of the quality of life, identifying the main problems with terminology and emphasizing its complex and interdisciplinary nature. A logical scheme of scienti c research in quality of life is presented and the integrated model for measurement of quality of life is formulated in Section 3. Having formed the Quality of Life Index function, it is necessary to assess validity and adaptability of the I QOL on the examples of the European Union countries. Empirical application of the Quality of Life Index in the European Union countries is presented in Section 4. should be understood and how the highest degree of quality of life may be achieved. In spite of the interest of philosophers and scientists from various elds in quality of life, it was usually used as a self-explanatory concept, the meaning of which was equated to the concept of material wealth (Easterlin, 2001(Easterlin, , 2003Quality, 2005) expressed by the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita. Moreover, the concept of quality of life is o en used interchangeably with the terms happiness, well-being, life satisfaction (Easterlin, 2003;Veenhoven, 2004), which brings still more confusion in the research of quality of life. According to R. Veenhoven (2004), quality of life is an umbrella term for di erent notions of the good life. In contrast to the previous proposition, B. K. Haas (1999) stresses that the terms quality of life, satisfaction with life, functional status and well-being can no longer be used interchangeably. She argues that they represent di erent levels and aspects of the broad concept of quality of life.

eoretical review of the main problems of the measurement of quality of life
According to K. D. Keith (2001), the concept of quality of life cannot be de ned exactly for several reasons. Firstly, it is a multidimensional and universal concept with a great number of factors -both objective and subjective. Secondly, there is a lack of consensus about its meaning because the subject of quality of life research also varies widely. erefore, the essence of the concept of quality of life may be more accurately revealed not by trying to de ne the concept, but by identifying the factors determining quality of life.
It is necessary to note that there is no unanimous opinion concerning factors determining quality of life and their interrelationship. Scienti c literature presents a wide range of factors determining quality of life (Table 1). To summarize, di erent authors (Sen, 1993;Felce & Perry, 1997;Cummins, 2000;Hagerty et al., 2001;Kenny, 2005;Stiglitz et al., 2010) present peculiar views on factors determining quality of life and treat them di erently, which makes quality of life research more di cult. e main factors a ecting quality of life identi ed in various elds of science are the following ones: physical and psychological health, personal security, educational achievement, family, income, housing, i.e., the factors of internal environment; freedom, political stability, economic environment, accessibility of education, social security, culture -the factors of external environment.

Measurement of quality of life by a composite index.
Analysis of scienti c literature failed to reveal any formulated principal requirements for measurement of quality of life. Depending on purposes of a particular study, various methods are used to measure quality of life: questionnaires and scales for public opinion polling (e.g., R. A. Cummins Comprehensive Quality of Life Scale), individual economic indicators (e.g., GDP per capita), health parameters to measure health-related quality of life (WHO-100) or composite indices (e.g., Human Development Index, e Economist Intelligence Unit's Quality of Life Index, Legatum Prosperity index, etc.). e aforementioned measures of quality of life are drawn by including only macro or micro environment, objective or subjective factors. e analysis of the main problems of quality of life conceptualization and measurement (Cummins, 2000;Hagerty et al., 2001;Kenny, 2005;Stiglitz et al., 2010;Veenhoven, 2013) showed that quality of life cannot be completely de ned by one or several economic and social indicators. us, complex measurement of quality of life is required. Following the scienti c literature (Freudenberg, 2003;Giovannini et al., 2005;Saisana et al., 2005), composite index can be de ned as an arti cially made instrument of quantitative and qualitative measurement of a particular sphere. e scienti c literature analysis of the measurement of quality of life by the index has induced distinguishing the main problems. Firstly, there is no commonly accepted classi cation of factors a ecting quality of life and unanimous opinion concerning economic and other factors determining quality of life. According to E. Giovannini (2005), if the theoretical framework is formed incorrectly and there is no clear understanding and de nition of the multidimensional phenomenon to be measured, the index may distort the situation presented. e other biggest number of discussions among scientists was caused by the stage of the determination of weight coe cients. It is very important to select appropriate weighting and aggregation procedures that respect both the theoretical framework and the data properties. It is o en di cult to form the substantiation of the measurement of weight coe cients and all variables are provided with the same weight coe cients (Cummins, 2000). In spite of that, other authors (Kenny, 2005) point out that di erent weight coe cients enable us to calculate the quality of life index more precisely as well as provide indicators with weight coe cients of di erent value. e authors of the paper regard the assessment of signi cance of factors a ecting quality of life as a necessary stage in the index of quality of life calculation.
On the basis of the analysis of scienti c literature and results of quality of life studies, the main problems of the measurement of quality of life have been identi ed, and can be united in a single scheme ( Figure 1).

FIGURE 1. e main problems of the measurement of quality of life
To summarize the analysis of the main problems of the measurement of quality of life, it is concluded that quality of life is not su ciently described in the scienti c literature, particularly from economic point of view: there is a lack of systemic and integrated approach to conceptualization and measurement of quality of life, there is no methodologically sound quality of life measurement model, which would identify and systematize the main factors determining quality of life and providing for integrated measurement of quality of life.

e methodology of the Quality of Life Index
e scienti c analysis of the main problems of quality of life measurement (Cummins, 2000;Hagerty et al, 2001;Veenhoven, 2013) proved that quality of life, as the concept involving multiple criteria which are determined by several groups of factors, di erent factors and indicators re ecting them, is best measured by means of indices. e measurement of quality of life by the quality of life index (I QOL ) helps to solve the problems of: Complexity -quality of life has to be analyzed from various perspectives and to include a range of quality of life factors and indicators re ecting them.
Comparability -the comparison of quality of life of people living in di erent countries both among themselves and in time has to be possible. Simplicity -the results yielded by the quality of life index should be clear and easy to interpret. Universality -I QOL should be universal and have a clear practical purpose, i.e., its results should be useful for public policy. To achieve methodological substantiation and integrated measurement of quality of life, a logical scheme of scienti c research in quality of life has been drawn (Appendix 1). e structure of this scheme has been determined by a clari ed conception of quality of life and a lack of methods for systemic measurement and research practice. e scienti c study includes 5 stages.
On the basis of analysis of scienti c literature (Cummins, 2000;Hagerty et al., 2001;Kenny, 2005;2013) and results of quality of life studies, the factors of quality of life have been identi ed, and united in a single model ( Figure 2) at Stage 1.
e Model for Measurement of Quality of Life includes external and internal environments as prerequisites for improvement of quality of life in the country. Both of these environments have four groups of factors. e factors relating to external environment include natural environment (climate conditions, quality of natural environment), political environment (political stability, political rights and civil Having identi ed and classi ed factors a ecting quality of life, it is necessary to determine indicators re ecting the factors a ecting quality of life (Table 2). e indicators have been selected on the basis of the following main principles at Stage 2: Independence -the variables should not be highly correlated with one another. e problem of multicolinearity should be addressed by eliminating the variables that are correlated. Reliability and objectivity -the database of the empirical study must be reliable and objective. Accessibility -the data should be easily available to data users. Comparability -the indicators should allow the comparisons of quality of life of people living in di erent countries, i.e., they should be relative. 33 indicators have been distinguished, 19 of which re ect external environment factors, the other 14 re ect internal environment factors (Table 2).
It must be noted that each indicator re ected in external and internal environment factors (see Table 2) has a di erent impact on quality of life, i.e., several of them have a negative impact on quality of life (greenhouse gas emissions per capita, in ation, unemployment rate, inequality of income, infant mortality rate, etc.), and other indicators have the positive e ect on quality of life (forest area, political stability indicator, GDP per capita, health expenditure, life expectancy at birth, real adjusted gross disposable income of households, etc.). us, it is important to measure quality of life in all its complexity.
Stage 2 also deals with normalization of values of indicators re ecting quality of life factors. Normalization is required prior to any data aggregation as the indicators in a data set o en have di erent measurement units (Freudenberg, 2003). e Min-Max normalization method is applied to normalize the indicators' values. It is selected as the  To determine weight coe cients of factors and groups of factors a ecting quality of life, an expert assessment has been chosen. In fact, 25 persons, whose activities are connected with social-economic policy/performance, healthcare system, education and the inducement of quality of natural environment development of the country, have been questioned. e individuals who took part in the survey might be regarded as the experts of the measurement of quality of life factors due to their quali cation and practical experience (Table 3).  Table 4. e results of the expert evaluation let identify the main factors and groups of factors determining quality of life. According to the expert evaluation, the internal environment a ects individual quality of life stronger than external environment, with the weight coe cients 0.60 and 0.40 respectively. e weight coe cients of groups of factors of external and internal environment di er marginally (Table 4).
Analysis of scienti c literature (Freudenberg, 2003;Giovannini et al., 2005;Saisana et al., 2005) and empirical studies revealed that a mathematical index calculation method is appropriate for measurement of quality of life as an object of study of the science of economics. Having selected and substantiated the indicators re ecting factors of quality of life and having applied weight coe cients obtained as a result of the expert assessment as well as the additive form of a function, the Quality of Life Index (I QOL ) Function is formed at Stage 3. A function of I QOL will make it possible to measure quality of life in the country and to compare it to that in other countries: I QOL = 0.4 I EQOL + 0.6 I IQOL ; (2) (3)

Where: I QOL -quality of life index;
IIQOL -internal quality of life index; IEQOL -external quality of life index; PW -physical well-being; NE -natural environment; IDW -individual development well-being; PEpolitical environment; MW -material well-being; EEeconomic environment; SW -social well-being. SEsocial environment; In contrast to quality of life measurement models proposed by other researchers, which do not distinguish the main components and groups of factors of quality of life (the integrated approach to measurement is not being applied) and use formulas with equal-value factors instead, the present Model distinguishes three levels with di erent weight coe cients given to index components, groups of factors, and individual factors. e index is counted and the analysis of reliability of I QOL is done at Stage 4. Having formed the Quality of Life Index function, it is necessary to assess validity and adaptability of the I QOL on the examples of the developed vs emerging European Union countries, which constitutes the purpose of the further section of this paper. Taking into account signi cant limitations of the study and having performed testing of the Quality of Life Measurement Model in the EU countries, it has been established that the results of the I QOL are more sensitive to di erent normative methods than to weight coe cient assignment scenarios. Because of the space limitation in the paper, the value of I QOL was calculated using the method of the normalization of the distance from the minimum and the maximum values. Furthermore, the weight coe cients are assigned to all factors and groups of factors. e analysis a rms that the results of the I QOL are statistically reliable, they do not contradict the classic measures of quality of life, yet are more exhaustive, measuring quality of life in the context of totality of factors of external and internal environment. e in uence of di erent methodologies brought on the accuracy of the measurement of quality of life within the country by I QOL is going to be analyzed in another article.

Empirical application of the Quality of Life Index in the developed and emerging European Union countries
Following the scienti c literature (Giovannini et al., 2005;Saisana et al., 2005) and the purposes of the quality of life assessment, the following intervals for evaluation of I QOL have been determined: 0-0.19 -minimal I QOL level; 0.2-0.49 (low I QOL level), 0.5-0.69 (medium I QOL level); 0.7-0.79 (high I QOL ) and 0.8-1 (very high I QOL level). According to I QOL scale, the EU countries were divided as indicated in Table 5. e empirical application of I QOL reveals the change of the quality of life of emerging economies countries in the context of developed EU countries. Only Ireland has the highest I QOL value during the analyzed period. e analysis of the situation of Ireland, according to the quality of life environment factors and their groups, lets identify the main reasons of the highest value of I QOL. e analysis of population and social conditions statistics published by Eurostat (2015) reveals that Ireland has the highest results of the indicators re ecting internal environment of quality of life ( Figure 3). Firstly, Ireland has one of the highest life expectancy at birth rates and high levels of educational a ainment in the EU countries during the period of 2005-2013. Ireland also is the top ranked country in the EU with the lowest divorces results and the highest crude birth rates. To put in a di erent way, family as the factor of quality  (2015), Ireland is one of the richest countries in the selected Central and Eastern European countries with a gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in purchasing power standards (PPS). (2.74 %), Germany (5.36 %), the United Kingdom (1.64 %), Greece (1.96 %), and in the emerging economy countries quality of life was growing faster: Slovenia (3.45 %), Slovakia (5 %), Cyprus (7.69 %), Lithuania (10 %) and Poland (7.14 %); however, during 2008-2009, I QOL showed a decline.
It is di cult to identify the main reasons of the annual change of the quality of life of the EU countries because of the change of the situation not only in the analyzed country, but also in the ones compared. Obviously, emerging economies vary signi cantly by their size, industry structure, political, social, and economic environment. ese di erences have a signi cant impact on the distinctiveness of their individuals' quality of life. However, the analysis of changes in I QOL from 2009 till 2013 revealed that during the studied period the e ects of groups of factors of internal environment on the I QOL increased more rapidly than the e ects of groups of factors of external environment of quality of life ( Figure 4).

Conclusions
Systematization of scienti c literature made it possible to identify the main problems of the assessment of quality of life. e researches have proved that treatment of the concept of quality of life varies across both theoretical and empirical studies conducted by di erent authors. ere is a lack of a clear conception of quality of life, which would integrate a wide range of scienti c disciplines in the scienti c literature at present. Also, there is no unanimous opinion concerning factors determining quality of life and their interrelationship, thus in the present paper a multi-criterion approach is developed, primarily focusing on the economic aspect of quality of life. Quality of life as a multidimensional concept cannot be completely de ned by one or several factors and its re ecting indicators, thus, complex assessment of quality of life is a must. e researches have proved that quality of life measurement by an index helps to solve the problem of a complex measurement of quality of life.
e Quality of Life Index has been constructed by the authors of the present paper via the following stages: forming the Model for Assessment of Quality of Life (i.e., identi cation of the factors and indicators, and grouping them in one system), normalizing and weighting the indicators, calculating the Index of Quality of Life and assessing validity and adaptability of the I QOL on the examples of the EU countries.
On the basis of the empirical research, in the period of 2005-2013, the following European Union countries had the highest quality of life: Ireland, Sweden, France and Finland. During the research period, a lower quality of life was found in the new EU members -Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary, and three Baltic States (Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia). In spite of that, the results proved that during the period from 2009 till 2013, I QOL was growing more rapidly in a number of emerging economy countries than in the developed EU member States. e results, which have been acquired during the theoretical and empirical researches, proved that I QOL may be important for analysis of the level of quality of life in the EU and other countries in the world; for identi cation of the main economic and social problems arising in the country; for singling out the key areas for improvement from the economic point of view; for development of economic policy programs and for assessment of e ectiveness of adopted and implemented decisions of business and political actors.
In recent years, the changing global political and economic situation in many developing countries and economies in transition leads to reconsidering the in uence of external environment factors on individual quality of life. An expert evaluation could be performed repeatedly covering all the European Union countries, which constitutes the purpose of our further studies.