Well-being, Control and Ageing: An Empirical Assessment

Quality of life (QoL) is at the same time a very concrete and elusive concept. It is concrete in the sense that most people have quite clear conceptions about what is not a good life. There is more variation, and less agreement, on what are the positive aspects of life. Among the reasons for this is that we as human beings share some basic needs which disturb us and make us unhappy when they are not met, while we as individuals have personal tastes and preferences which tend to direct our dreams about the good life in different directions. This being said, the convergent images of the negative sides of life, and the more divergent images of the positive will, in reality, interact and be modified by social structures, cultural norms, and shared experiences such as ageing. They do, however, represent contrasting perspectives on what QoL is and how it could be studied: one based on an indirect approach, the other on a more direct one. The first will tend to focus on circumstances that may make a good life possible, while the other will study the good life more directly in the form of subjective well-being or happiness.