This book discusses the methods used to create quality of the life indexes. It suggests that economic liberty gives a considerably different view of the quality of life and provides a synthesis by combining the life attributes, both physical and environmental into a final set of world rankings.

List of Tables and Figures -- Acknowledgments -- CHAPTER ONE -- AN INTRODUCTION TO INDEX NUMBERS -- 1.1 Introduction -- CHAPTER TWO -- MEASURING TILE QUALITY OF LIFE ACROSS COUNTRIES (2.1 Introduction 2.2 Attributes of Physical Well-Being 2.3 Weighting the Attributes of the Quality of Life Indexes 2.4 Rankings of the Quality of Life 2.5 Conclusions)-- CHAPTER THREE --NONPARAMETRIC TESTS ON THE PHYSICAL QUAUTY OF LIFE (3.1 Introduction 3.2 Attributes of Economic Well-Being 3.3 Cluster Analysis at Quality of Life Attributes 3.4 The Empirical Results Using Cluster Techniques 3.5 Nonparametric Estimates of Attribute Density Functions 3.6 The Empirical Results (or the Kernel Estimates 3.7 Inequality Measures 3.8 Empirical Results of the Inequality Measures 3.9 Conclusions )-- CHAPTER FOUR (MEASURING FCONOMIC LIBF.RTY ACROSS COUNTRIES (4.1 Introduction 4.2 Attributes of Economic Liberty 4.3 Rankings of Economic Liberty 4.4 Conclusions ) -- CHAPTER FIVE -- FREEDOM OF CHOICE AND THE QUALITY OF LIFE (5.1 Introduction 5.2 Economic Liberty and the Quality of Life ) - REFERENCES.