15 December 2014

/ EUROPEAN COMMISSION
EUROSTAT
Unit F-4: Quality of Life

Expert Group on Quality of life indicators

6th meeting

Luxembourg, 20/21 November 2014

BECH – Room B2/404

Draft Minutes

Introduction
The main purpose of the meeting was to finalise the list of indicators so that it is complete to the extent possible given by data availability and to agree on the headline indicators.
Adoption of the agenda and approval of the minutes of the former meeting
Dimension: material living conditions
Housing deprivation and abundance

Eurostat proposed to the Expert Group to use as a main or headline indicator for objective housing conditions space available to the household, broken down into a high (under-occupied dwellings rate), medium and low (overcrowding rate) level. The Expert Group decided that although this indicator is useful, it does not cover well the whole housing sub-dimension and it should therefore be supplemented by share of people living in a dwelling with a leaking roof, damp walls, floors or foundation, or rot in window. These two objective indicators are to be complemented by satisfaction with accommodation. Also, Eurostat should further investigate if the threshold +1 room more than those necessary to the household is appropriate for the purpose, or another one, like +2, is more relevant.

Constrained consumption
An indicator: percentage of households that spent on Food and non-alcoholic beverages and Housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels less than 50, between 50 and 70 and 70 or more per cent of all expenditure, was approved to be included in the framework. The link to structure of expenditure will have to be provided as complementary information.
Dimension: productive or main activity
Eurostat has proposed to the EG the inclusion of 3 employment-related indicators within the QoL framework, oneunder the dimension Productive and main activity, andthe other two under Governance and basic rights. The first of themEmployment rate (proposed to be added under the dimension Productive and main activity) has been proposed as a complementary indicatorto the unemployment rates in order to measure the quantity of employment and the EG agreed unanimously to adopt it. The second indicatorpresentedwas the Gender employment rate gap. It has been largely discussed and adopted as well. Moreover, it is believed to be a solution to the measurement problem (underestimation in some cases) of the gender pay gap and the general lack of indicators in the dimension dedicated to the Governance and basic rights. The Expert Group decided to include this indicator in the sub-dimension Discrimination and equal opportunities.
The third indicator proposed, Migrant employment rate gap, has raised several points for discussion. First of all, country of birth was preferred in the classification of a migrant due to the potential influence over the country's legislative policy in term of their citizenship application procedures in case that the citizenship will be used as the main classifier. Second issue is that LFS is considered to be an insufficient source of data for statistics about migrants due to small sample sizes which is a consequence of very low percentages of the Extra EU migrants in the total population in some countries.Non reliable data should be excluded. On the other hand, this issue is high on the EU agenda and the quality of this kind of data is continually being improved year by year The conclusion is that the issue is important, and an indicator on the topic is needed, but the quality of the data should be further investigated.
Dimension: health
Eurostat proposed to reduce the number of the indicators on the self-reported health status (within Dimension Outcomes, Sub-dimension Morbidity and health status). For the reasons of the high correlations of these health assessment indicators, as well as problems with questions on long standing illness and limitations caused by health problems, only the 'general health' indicator was kept. The indicators 'Suffer from any a chronic (long-standing) illness or condition' and 'Limitation in activities because of health problems' were agreed to be deleted from the framework.
Dimension: education
No changes to the dimension were proposed.
Dimension: leisure and social interactionsFace-to-face contacts
The dimension 5. Leisure and social interactions; sub-dimension 5.2.1 Social interactions has been discussed and the proposal wasthe reduction of the number of indicators measuring social contact to 1 out of the 4 available, either by building a synthetic or by choosing one to act as a proxy.. It has been previously proposed and approved by a previous EG meeting to create a synthetic indicator measuring the level of social interaction out of the four indicators. However the issue was raised that face-to-face and indirect interaction may have different impacts on well-being, and therefore should not be mixed. Therefore, the new proposal presented at this meeting included a comparison between this indicator and the one built from the two face-to-face interaction indicators. A third option was to keep only one indicator and consider it a proxy. 'Getting together with friends'was suggested as the best one as it is less susceptible to be biased (e.g. influence of the physical distance) and has the highest predictive power for measures of the subjective well-being (according to analysis performed on the EQLS data). This last option has been preferred and agreed upon by the EG, after discussing the empirical findings and further considerations.
Dimension: economic and physical safetyEmployment security transitions
A new indicator was proposed to belong to the dimension Employment and physical security under the name 'Labour transition by type of contract – change in the employment security' as the category itself is insufficiently developed. It is a measure of the change in the employment security of a person – comparison of the current employment security with the employment security of t-12 months.
The Expert Grouphas not agreed with the proposed categories used for the creation ofthis indicator. One of the suggestions was to exclude the following type of contract categories: 'retired' and 'inactive'. Eurostat has confirmed the feasibility of these amendments to the categorization as proposed; or else if required. Further disadvantage of the proposed indicator was that it does not fit well to the proposed categorization as it is meant to be added to the category called 'income security'.
Alternatively, the Expert Group proposed to rather use an indicator such as 'change in ability to face unexpected financial expenses' or to use 'transition rate over the past 12 months' in a simpler context, e.g. the transition rate from unemployment to employment. Labour mobility could also be used as a proxy.It is recommended in the academic literature to use '1-employment rate' as a proxy for the measurements of our purpose – probability of finding a job.Attention must be paid to the intra-household inequality arising from the nature of the SILC data within this framework.
The conclusion is to reject the indicator as proposed, but to continue discussion upon it in the future. For the current moment, it is not of sufficient quality for an indicator that could be included in the framework of the Quality of Life.
Dimension:natural and living environment
Eurostat’s proposal of including in the framework Urban population exposure to air pollution by particulate matter (PM10) as a complementary objective indicator for air quality/ pollution was agreed upon at the previous EG meeting. Some concerns have been raised on whether is better to use the average level or distribution with different thresholds. It was also suggested to use the number of days in which the threshold has been exceeded. The EG considers this to be a more easily communicable indicator, and suggested at this meeting that this should be the preferred indicator to be included in the QoL framework. Eurostat will further investigate the availability of this indicator.
Dimension: Governance and basic rights
The labour market situation of migrants – discussed already earlier on
Dimension: Overall life experience
UK presentation on Subjective Well-Being
Publication of the 2013 AH Module
Headline indicators
Eurostat proposed a number of criteria for the selection of the headline indicators. An extensive debate has evolved over these criteria. The current criteria were accepted as such, however further remarks and recommendation were made by the EG. Political relevance, convergence to other QoL measurement initiatives (on specific elements rather than globally) and univocal, clear meaning of the interpretation (does a higher value imply a positive situation, and how is a change in the indicators’ value to be implemented) are to be highlighted as well.
Further discussion on a proposed list of headline indicators
In terms of Material living conditions, median income and the S80/ S20 ratio have been chosen as headline indicators.
In terms of Productive or main activity, three headline indicators were chosen 'long-term unemployment rate', 'job satisfaction' and 'employment rate'In terms of Healthdimension , it has been agreed that the best indicator from a conceptual point of view is the 'Healthy life years', however it was not chosen due to existing methological difficulties. Therefore, the EG decided to choose two headline indicators for this section, namely 'Life expectancy' and 'Self-perceived health status' until the 'healthy life years' indicator has an acceptable level of quality .
Within the Education dimension , the 'educational attainment' (with categories of high, medium and low) was the chosen as a headline indicator.
Within the section dedicated to the Leisure and social interactions, two headline indicators were adopted. For the Leisure part it is the 'Satisfaction with time use' indicator, and for the Social interactions part it is the Social support (having someone to rely on for help_”. Trust in others has been also highlighted as a potentially important indicator, and further analysis needs to be undertaken on this topic.
For the dimension of Economic and physical safety, two indicators were agreed upon – 'Ability to face unexpected financial expenses' for Economic security and vulnerability and 'Crime, violence or vandalism in the area' for Physical and personal security section. Crime rates coming from a victimisation survey would be preferable option for the later, but no data source on that is available at the moment.
In terms of Governance and basic rights dimension, the headline indicator has not been agreed upon as more elaborate analysis is needed for the three 'trust in institutions indicators. A proposal will be made on this at the next EG meeting. Also for the dimension Natural and living environment the EG recommended Eurostat to carry on further analysis on the correlations and validation of the primary indicators included, and a proposal on the topic will be made at the next EG meeting.For the dimension overall life experience life satisfaction has been unanimously selected as the headline indicator.
A call for recommendations on which QoL/ SWB indicators to be included in 'yearly'/ core EU SILC and 3& 6-yearly' rolling Ad Hoc Modules on suitable topics was issuedat this EG meeting. This work will contribute to a sub Task Force meeting on the Revision of the EU-SILC legal basis dedicated to this topic that is foreseen in April 2015.)Eurostat further clarified that the indicator proposals for other ESS surveys are also within the mandate of this EG and should be included in the recommendations section of the final report.
Immediately after the call was announced, a brief discussion took place. It was agreed that it is not sufficient for example to collect data on 'job satisfaction' only every six years and shall be recommended to be added to the 3 year EU SILC module on Labour(.The EG is asked to further reflect on these issues and make proposals, at the next meeting or in writing as part of the report.
Report on the work carried out by the Expert Group on Quality of Life indicators
The report on the work of the Expert Group shall be assembled and distributed in the following manner. The F4 QoL Unit will aim to finalize the headlines and the indicators as well as create a canvas of the most recent update of received recommendations from the EG members. The collected and updated information set shall be sent out from QoL Unit to the EG members by the end of December 2014. The EG is invited to submit further comments upon these documents by the end of January 2015. By mid of February, final documentation will be established that will include a set of recommendations and the guidelines for future steps of the Expert Group.

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