Quality of Life and the Millennium Challenge

Valerie Moller Is Professor of Quality of Life Studies in the Institute for Social and Economic Research at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa. She has researched a wide range of quality of life issues in South Africa for public information and policy purposes, including housing, poverty and unemployment, development and service delivery, criminal victimisation and intergenerational relations. Together with colleagues she developed the first survey instruments in the 1980s to measure perceptions of personal well-being among South Africans - the study is regularly updated. More recently she successfully lobbied for the inclusion of a quality of life module in Statistics South Africa's annual household survey which produces the bulk of national social indicators. Denis Huschka is Managing Director of the German Council for Social and Economic Data, situated in Berlin/Germany. He also conducts scientific studies as a Research Associate of the Institute for Social and Economic Research at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa and he is Permanent Visiting Fellow of the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP). He has done empirical research on regional differences in Quality of Life in Germany and Europe, and on Anomia in post-apartheid South Africa. He was involved in establishing or carrying out several survey initiatives (Wohlfahrtssurvey, Germany; General Household Survey 2002, South Africa; Euromodule, Europe). His most recent research interest focuses on the sociological concept of individualisation as applied to given names as social indicators.

• Learning from the Past to Inform the Future.- Challenges for Quality-of-Life Studies in the New Millennium.- South Africa: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow.- Poverty and the Quality of Life: Lessons from South African Research.- The Importance of a Mixed Cash- and Harvest Herding Based Economy to Living in the Arctic – An Analysis on the Survey of Living Conditions in the Arctic (SLiCA).- Refining Concepts and Measurement to Assess Cross-Cultural Quality of Life.- The International Scale Interval Study: Improving the Comparability of Responses to Survey Questions About Happiness.- More Than SF-36? Using Narratives to Elaborate Health and Well-Being Data in Recent Lower-Limb Amputees.- The Spiritual Dimension of Quality of Life, with Special Reference to Education and Spirituality.- Addressing the Role of Stability and Change in the New Millennium.- The Impact of Instability on Subjective Well-Being: A Cross-National Study.- Stability and Change in National and Personal Wellbeing in Algeria: A Case Study of a Developing Country in Transition.- ‘All That Glitters Is Not Gold’: Johannesburg and Migrant Access to Social Services.- Exploring the Role of Good Governance For a Better Quality of Life.- Trust and Life Satisfaction in Eastern and Western Europe.- Quality of Life in Cities: A Question of Mobility and Accessibility.- The Main Determinants for Subjective Well-Being: A Quest for the Holy Grail?.- Health Care – A Major Challenge in the New Millennium.- The Vicious Circularity of Mental Health Effects of HIV/AIDS: Symptom and Cause of Poor Responses to the Epidemic.- Universal Coverage but Unequal Access?.- Prospects for Community-Based Rehabilitation in the New Millennium.