QUALITY OF LIFE MEASUREMENT ACROSS EUROPEAN UNION COUNTRIES – AN EXPLORATORY APPROACH

The paper relies on the newest set of quality of life dimensions defined by the European Commission, in order to achieve a two-fold purpose: to obtain a detailed image of European Union countries’ synchronization in terms of each quality of life dimension and to create a new, comprehensive metric of a country’s overall quality of life by aggregating the information provided by each specific dimension. Thus, our complementary research approach relies on: i) an in-depth exploratory analysis to assess European Union countries’ resemblance in terms of quality of life dimensions; ii) the development of a novel rating system, which serves as a barometer for the quality of life status and allows countries’ ranking. The findings revealed that increased resemblance between countries appeared for governance and basic rights indicators, productive activity and education indicators, while the highest dissimilarity was present for the living environment indicators and material living conditions indicators.