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South African Quality of Life Trends Over Three Decades, 1980–2010

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Abstract

The South African Quality of Life Trends study has tracked the subjective well-being of South Africans in ten waves from 1983 to 2010. The paper presents the SAQoL trendline of life satisfaction, happiness and perceptions of life getting better or worse against the backdrop of the transition from apartheid to democracy. Subjective well-being peaked in the month following the first open elections in April 1994 when black and white South Africans were equally satisfied and happy at levels found in other democratic societies. But post-election euphoria was short-lived and levels of well-being dropped the following year and racial inequalities in evaluations of life re-emerged. The tenth and latest wave in the study was conducted a few months after South Africa’s successful hosting of the Soccer World Cup. In 2010, the proportions of all South Africans expressing satisfaction, happiness and optimism was among the highest since the coming of democracy—just over half stated they were satisfied, close on two-thirds were happy, and half felt life was getting better. Nonetheless, while the standard of living has increased for a minority of formerly disadvantaged South Africans and a small black middle class has emerged, there are still huge disparities in both material and subjective well-being. In 1997 and 2010, South Africans were asked what would make them happier in future. In 2010, the majority of citizens still hoped for basic necessities, income and employment, to enhance their quality of life.

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Notes

  1. The scale of the project is documented more fully in Møller (2007a).

  2. The quality-of-life module for the SAQoL trends study was placed in a MarkData omnibus survey or was part of a full survey commissioned to MarkData that inquired into perceptions of social change or the deepening of democracy. The relationship between subjective well-being and key issues in South African society have been reported elsewhere and are not the focus of this paper which aims to give an overview of trends in life satisfaction, happiness and expectations for the future.

  3. It was assumed that all respondents would be capable of an appreciation of their own lives. Responses to the life satisfaction and happiness items were recorded on a five-point scale with a neutral ‘neither/nor’ midpoint. The neutral option was not mentioned in the cue to discourage evasive or non responses.

  4. For example, happiness, which has more affective connotations than satisfaction, was chosen as the single indicator included in a wave that focused on national pride and subjective well-being (Møller et al. 1999; Dickow and Møller 2002).

  5. In contrast to imposed racial classification under apartheid, the census and attitude surveys of the democratic era ask respondents to self-classify their racial identity.

  6. A substantial proportion referred to sport or the World Cup in response to an item in the 2010 survey on what made them proud of their country, a topic to be reported elsewhere.

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Acknowledgments

This paper is dedicated to Lawrence Schlemmer (1936–2011) who had the foresight to initiate the SAQoL trends study and South Africa’s social indicators movement in the late 1970s. He vetted the items included in the tenth wave and would have endorsed South Africa’s optimism for the future. A generous grant from the National Research Foundation (NRF) funded the 2010 wave of the SAQoL trends study. However, findings, opinions and conclusions in this paper are mine and should not be attributed to the National Research Foundation or any of my colleagues.

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  1. Institute of Social and Economic Research, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa

    Valerie Møller

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  1. Valerie Møller
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Correspondence to Valerie Møller.

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 9,10,11.

Table 9 2010 subjective well-being indicators: frequency distributions
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Table 10 Changes that would increase future happiness—2010 results
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Table 11 Changes that would increase future happiness—1997 results
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Møller, V. South African Quality of Life Trends Over Three Decades, 1980–2010. Soc Indic Res 113, 915–940 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-012-0120-y

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