A Statistical Approach to Life Quality Analysis

Abstract

The article deals with the approaches to the study of population life quality in countries around the world. We considered the formation of the main Human Development Index, ?alculated annually by the United Nations, its ?omposition and method of ?alculating the indicators, ?hanges in the structure and calculation of the indicators of the HDI. According to the data of the 2014 United Nations Report, all countries of the world were divided into four groups: the countries with very high human development level, the countries with high human development level, the countries with medium human development level and the countries with low human development level. In the paper the complex analysis of human development is conducted for the group with very high level of development. In the study we suggested the method of selection of integrated, generalizing indicators using the method of dimension reduction – the method of principal components. By the method of principal components the generalizing integrated indicators, which allowed assessing living conditions of the population at the most generalized level, were identified. The principal factors were selected taking into account the total accumulated dispersion, Kaiser criterion and the scree plot. In the result of the recalculations with the axes rotation by the method of Varimax of initials, three principal components were obtained. The model of dependance of the Human Development Index (HDI) – ? on the selected principal factors f1, f2 and f3 was built. The countries, included to the first group with very high human development level were classified using cluster analysis. The classification was carried out by the selected generalizing factors. In the result of hierarchical procedures for combining, we identified four groups of countries – four clusters, which confirm the differences in the conditions of human development in the group of countries with very high human development level.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n3s7p79