Estonian Human Development Report

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Figure 3.7.1. The placement of European countries based on individual and social quality of life, 2006 Individual quality of life 1.0 0.9 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 Spain Germany Cyprus Sweden Finland Austria Ireland Belgium Slovenia United Kingdom Denmark Norway The Netherlands France 0.3 Poland Portugal Hungary 0.2 Latvia 0.1 ESTONIA Slovakia 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 Quality of society Source: Eurostat and European Social Survey 2006 (authors’ calculations). level of quality of life, but also of the qualitative significance of this difference. What are the potential factors causing Estonia’s very low ranking in terms of quality of life? According to Table 3.7.2., the areas most detrimental to the quality of society is the bad state of health of the population (number of years lived in health), the worst in all of Europe, as well as the lower level of physical security (higher rate of murders) and the extremely low percentage of social expenditures References 1. Allardt, E. (1993). Having, loving, being: An alternative to the Swedish model of welfare research. M. C. Nussbaum, A. Sen, The quality of life. Oxford, Clarendon Press, pp. 88–94. 2. Böhnke, P. (2004) Perceptions of Social Integration and Exclusion in an Enlarged Europe. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Work Conditions, Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities. in comparison with the GDP. The situation in Estonia is relatively best with regard to the labour market where the average unemployment rate in 2006 was among the lowest in the last 15 years. Estonia’s problems with regard to the individual quality of life are similar to those related to the quality of our society, including the fear of becoming a victim of a crime and people’s dissatisfaction with their jobs and material situation. The results of the analysis show that the low individual quality of life of Estonian residents is “in conformity” with the “low livability” of the society. Estonia’s lengthy period of economic growth has improved its inhabitants’ standard of living, but has not been so effective as to allow us to reach a quality of life comparable to most European countries. The lack of significant improvement in the social quality of life may begin to have a negative effect on individual opportunities for well-being in the near future. The society has various options for increasing the general quality of life. The general improvement of living conditions can be achieved through the advancement of employment opportunities as well as access to education and healthcare, the enhancement of the level of social security and reduction of crime, the improvement of the overall social infrastructure and the provision of more effective social protection through the development of the network of social benefits and services. Increasing social cohesion in general requires us to lessen the development gap of the less-developed regions, promotes the expansion of equal opportunities and the reduction of social exclusion. In strengthening the social bonds between people, it is important to support and promote social solidarity. 3. Dehley, J. (2004). Life satisfaction in an enlarged Europe. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities. 4. Veenhoven, R. (1996). Happy life-expectance: A comprehensive measure of quality-of-life in nations. Social Indicators Research 39, 1–58. | 80
CHAPTER 4 Quality of Life and Integration 4.1. Introduction The following chapter analyzes the problems related to integration in Estonian society from the aspect of the quality of life. The analysis is conducted by examining the level of life satisfaction of ethnic minorities compared to other European countries and focusing on specific problems by analyzing two fields of activity – socio-political participation and the labour market. As it appears from the following analysis, the satisfaction among the indigenous population and the ethnic minorities differs, which is a social problem not only in Estonia but in several countries of “old Europe”. Therefore, the Council of Europe Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (see Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and Explanatory Report, http://www.coe.int/t/dghl/monitorings/minorities/1_AtGlance/PDF_Text_FCNM_et.pdf, pp. 23–24), which establishes the general requirements for the integration of ethnic minorities, places great importance on the setting of goals to ensure that the members of society belonging to ethnic minorities have opportunities equal to the indigenous people for participating in public life and the labour market. The opportunity for minorities to participate in public life and the labour market in European countries is guaranteed by very diverse legislative and administrative measures. How these opportunities are realized depends on the country’s policies, as well as, to a great extent, on the people themselves, their activism and their will to realize themselves in society. An examination of the current situation in Estonia and the recollection of the social shock that occurred during the so-called April Unrest prompt the question that can be considered the central problem: are the young people who have socialized during the two transition decades into the “new Estonian society” more satisfied and integrated than their parents and grandparents? Or are new problems developing for the younger generation that was born and has grown up in the Republic of Estonia upon entering the Estonian labour market and public sphere? Can a “third-generation problem” similar to the Western European countries develop in Estonia, which could culminate in protests by Russian young people? 4.2. Ethnic differentiations in satisfaction evaluations: Estonia’s distinctions in the European context The following analysis continues the topic of the quality of life and life satisfaction covered in Chapter 3 from the aspect of ethnicity. The analysis, which was previously based on percentage distributions, has been developed further in this chapter (see Realo, Chapter 3), and the importance of the factors comprising life satisfaction has been compared with the help of relative statistical coefficients. The analysis in this chapter confirms the previous results indicating that the significant factors affecting the formation of life satisfaction in Estonia involve the individual’s age, citizenship, education, and material welfare. This analysis shows that in the European context Estonia is quite distinctive, because people’s satisfaction evaluations are strongly related to their ethnic background and citizenship – the 2006 European Social Survey data on 25 countries 18 indicated that both variables – ethnic affiliation and citizenship – have a strong association with life satisfaction (see Annex 4.2.1) 19 . The following subchapter focuses primarily on the analysis of life satisfaction by ethnic background. Although, based on Annex 4.2.1, citizenship and ethnic self-determination are equally important factors in ascertaining life satisfaction, the association with citizenship can be greatly explained by ethnic affiliation – i.e. the citizens of Russia and other countries express their lower life satisfaction primarily when they define themselves as an ethnic minority. 18 In order to make the survey findings more representative, the data are usually weighted. However, the deficiency of the European Social Survey is that in the case of two countries – Latvia and Romania – the data weights were not given. When analyzing Estonia, it is important to make comparisons with other post-socialist countries. Therefore, in this analysis data from all 25 of the countries covered by 2006 Estonian Social Survey have been used. In the case of weighted and non-weighted data, there are differences of a few percent in the satisfaction assessments. The trustworthiness of the analysis is confirmed by the fact that the statistical importance of the association coefficient and the strength of the coefficient remain the same. 19 In Western countries, the ethnic factor is also important in Denmark, although the ethnic differences there are smaller than in Estonia (The Cramer’s V value, which expresses the association with life satisfaction, is 0.153, in Estonia it is 0.209.) 81 |
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Estonian Human Development Report
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Estonian Human Development Report T
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4.2. Ethnic differentiations in sat
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Preface This year, the Estonian Hum
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CHAPTER 1 Estonian Human Developmen
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Figure 1.1.3. Life expectancy in co
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Figure 1.2.2. Life expectancy at bi
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to reality. The greatest inaccuracy
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Figure 1.2.9. Internal migration ev
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12. Marksoo, A. 1992. “Dynamics o
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Table 1.3.1. PISA 2006 study result
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Table 1.3.2. Number of students in
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1.4. The gross domestic product and
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Figure 1.4.3. Estonian GDP (right a
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Page 40 and 41: Figure 2.4.4. Various accidents, tr
Page 42 and 43: 2.5. Lifestyle and behaviour as a s
Page 44 and 45: Figure 2.5.5. Smoking in Estonia in
Page 46 and 47: Figure 2.6.1. Overview of the compo
Page 48 and 49: Table 2.6.2. Use of specialized med
Page 50 and 51: dren. The majority of services are
Page 52 and 53: Figure 2.8.2. How much a health dis
Page 54 and 55: 2.10. Policy recommendations aimed
Page 56 and 57: CHAPTER 3 Quality of life and life
Page 58 and 59: Table 3.2.1. Characteristics of liv
Page 60 and 61: Table 3.2.4. An assessment of the e
Page 62 and 63: Figure 3.2.4. Difference in the job
Page 64 and 65: Table 3.2.6. Agreement with stateme
Page 66 and 67: Figure 3.3.1. Satisfaction with lif
Page 68 and 69: Figure 3.3.4. Percentage of people
Page 70 and 71: Figure 3.4.1. Types of quality of l
Page 72 and 73: Figure 3.5.1. Percentage of teenage
Page 74 and 75: Figure 3.5.4. Percentage of respond
Page 76 and 77: Arieh A., Conti C., Kutsar D., Nicg
Page 78 and 79: Figure 3.6.2. Subjective quality of
Page 80 and 81: Pieper, A. Sixsmith, Care related q
Page 84 and 85: Figure 4.2.1. Life satisfaction by
Page 86 and 87: Table 4.2.1. Factors forming genera
Page 88 and 89: Annexes Annex 4.2.1. Socio-demograp
Page 90 and 91: Figure 4.3.1. Changes in the assess
Page 92 and 93: Figure 4.3.4. Attitudes of the Esto
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Page 96 and 97: Table 4.4.3. Agreement of the Russi
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Page 100 and 101: Figure 4.5.4. Certainty of Estonian
Page 102 and 103: mote equal opportunities. At the (e
Page 104 and 105: CHAPTER 5 Quality of life in a cons
Page 106 and 107: Figure 5.2.1. GDP and AIC per capit
Page 108 and 109: Figure 5.2.3. Distribution of consu
Page 110 and 111: Figure 5.2.4. Indexes of environmen
Page 112 and 113: Table 5.3.1. Comparison of countrie
Page 114 and 115: Figure 5.3.3. Comparison of types o
Page 116 and 117: Table 5.3.5. Connections between po
Page 118 and 119: Table 5.4.1. Who and what are the f
Page 120 and 121: Table 5.4.3. Young people’s asses
Page 122 and 123: Figure 5.4.6. Time spent on the con
Page 124 and 125: Table 5.4.6. The perception of prob
Page 126 and 127: 5.6. Summary To briefly summarize t
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Page 130 and 131: Figure 6.2.4. Relationship between
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Figure 6.2.7. Difference between th
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Figure 6.3.1. GDP, government secto
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Figure 6.3.3. Employed 15-74-year-o
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Figure 6.3.8. Percentage of social
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References 1. Aaviksoo, A., G. Paat
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Figure 6.4.1. Labour market flexibi
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Figure 6.4.3. Creations of jobs ind
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Figure 6.4.5. Public expenditures o
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Figure 6.4.6. Ratio of the particip
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6.5. Cities as development engines
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Table 6.5.2. Existence of developme
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have been underfinanced or are not
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Table 7.1. Factors that favour and
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Table 7.2. Potential economic devel
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Authors Chapter 1 Ene-Margit Tiit,
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Margit Keller (PhD) is a Senior Res
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Special prizes Estonian Human Devel
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Estonian Human Development Report H
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Estonian Human Development Report H
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Honorable mentions Estonian Human D
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Estonian Human Development Report P
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Estonian Human Development Report A
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