QUALITY OF LIFE IN THE SUBJECTIVE ESTIMATES OF THE POPULATION: RUSSIA IN THE EUROPEAN CONTEXT

Despite the popularity of interdisciplinary assessments of social well-being and quality of life of people in different countries, neither national nor international comparative projects provide a unified approach to assessing the quality of life. There are many approaches that differ in the amount of information used, methods of its analysis, details of the problems studied, approaches to their measurement. In sociological studies of the quality of life, we still search for an optimal combination of objective indicators of the social-economic development of countries and subjective estimates of life by the population. Moreover, quite often, when comparing objective and subjective indicators, the rankings of countries do not coincide even if the dynamics of indicators looks similar. The article presents a new approach to the analysis and measurement of the quality of life that takes into account not only physical existence, social environment, well-being and safety but also opportunities for personal growth, creativity, freedom to choose one’s life trajectory and style. Based on the data of the 2016 and 2012 European Social Studies (ESS), the author conducted a comparative analysis of the subjective life quality in Russia and other European countries. The article presents a method for calculating a composite index of 24 indicators including 11 indicators representing the existential aspect of the quality of life. The comparison of Russia with European countries shows that the subjective quality of life in Russia is lower than in other countries of Europe due to the long-term social transformation, unjust distribution of property and incomes, and strong social-economic differentiation. The social trauma had serious consequences for the identification, social connections, loyalty, patterns of thinking and behavior, and is still accompanied by a significant social-psychological tension and low estimates of most life quality parameters.