A Comparative Analysis of the Quality of Life Between the Poor and Non-Poor: A Study of Rourkela City India

The concept of “Quality of Life” is much wider than standard of living or material living conditions. It takes into account the working conditions, the degree of social integration, health and education, economically or physically fragility. Only money can never be a real measure to quality of life. The paper is an effort to make a study on quality of life between the poor and the non-poor and to infer the impact of poverty on quality of life. Also, an attempt was made to assess the relation between the domains of Quality of Life. The study is conducted among 500 poor and 200 non-poor in the Rourkela city of Odisha. WHOQOL-BREF is used for the assessment of quality of life. Results from the analysis suggest that except the Social domain, all other domains of QOL such as overall QOL, overall Health, Physical domain, Psychological domain and Environmental domain, are having significant differences between poor and non-poor. However, interestingly, the analysis showed a highest mean score for Environmental domain of QOL among the poor compared to non-poor indicating a very good financial resource, opportunities for acquiring new information and skills, enjoying leisure activities, a high degree of freedom, physical safety and security, a better accessibility and quality of health and social care and a better home environment.