Politics and Quality of Life: The Role of Well-Being in Political Outcomes

In: SpringerBriefs in Political Science Ser

Abstract

Intro -- Acknowledgments -- Contents -- About the Authors -- Chapter 1: Introduction: Quality of Life Studies -- Our Dulling and Rusting Tools -- The Roots and Purpose of this Project -- Our Goals -- Chapter 2: Understanding Quality of Life -- Scholarly Work on Quality of Life -- Public Safety -- Health -- Infrastructure -- Education -- Economic Environment -- Other Indicators -- Why We Use Objective Measures of Well-Being -- Chapter 3: Exploring the Components of Our Quality of Life Index -- Education -- Public Safety -- Infrastructure -- Health -- Economic Development -- Our Indicators and Index -- Chapter 4: Constructing a Measure of Well-Being -- Why Use an Index? -- The Data -- Building the Index: The Rules -- The Indicators -- Education -- Public Safety -- Health -- Economic Development -- Infrastructure -- Final Quality of Life Score -- Interpreting the Quality of Life Scores -- Statistically Validating our Index -- Factor Analysis and Principal Component Analysis -- Survey Validation: Subjective Quality of Life and Our Index -- Survey Results -- Chapter 5: Quality of Life in Theory and Practice -- Quality of Life as a Resource -- Maximizing Utility Model-Rationalism -- Psych Model -- Chapter 6: Quality of Life and Trust -- Trust Literature Review -- Theory -- Hypotheses -- Methods and Data -- National Election Survey Data -- Tests and Results -- Understanding Quality of Life and Trust -- Chapter 7: Quality of Life and Direct Democracy -- Direct Democracy -- Theory and Hypotheses -- Methods and Data -- Tests and Results -- Chapter 8: Local Tax Ballot Measures and Quality of Life -- Theory: How Do People Choose Their Vote? -- Quality of Life as a Heuristic -- Direct Democracy and Quality of Life in Washington -- Tests, Data, and Results -- Implications -- Chapter 9: Federal Spending and Quality of Life