Quality of Life (QoL) index per ward

This month’s map of the month indicating quality of life across Gauteng at a ward level, is the first in a series of maps depicting the results from GCRO’s recently released 2013 Quality of Life (QoL) survey. In order to measure quality of life, the GCRO Quality of Life surveys include over 200 indicator questions across a wide range of areas; 54 of those are variables used to construct the quality of life index. These include subjective and objective indicator questions. All are combined into 10 ‘dimensions’ of quality of life – to try and measure both overall quality of life, and the ‘drivers’ behind it either rising or falling. These dimensions include work, socio-political, global, security, connectivity, community, family, dwelling, health and infrastructure. Each indicator is allocated a score of 0 or 1 for each individual respondent. These are combined to create each of the ten dimensions, which are scaled out of 1, where the maximum possible score for each dimension is 1. A score of 1 reflects extremely high levels of quality of life, a score of 0 the reverse. When the dimensions are added, perfect quality of life is represented by 10 (out of 10), thus the higher the score the higher the level of quality of life. For more detail regarding the construction of the quality of life index please refer to gcro1.wits.ac.za/qolviewer/.

The ward level results indicate the areas of lowest quality of life are concentrated in the former townships such as Alexandra, Tembisa, Sebokeng and Mamelodi. These findings confirm the resilience of apartheid inequalities, and the way they are woven into the spatial geography of the city-region. For more information on the 2013 quality of life index and other results from the survey, please refer to the 2013 QoL survey project page.