Measuring the Change in Japan's Quality-of-Life.

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This study presents a DEA/MI (Data Envelopment Analysis/Malmquist Index) analysis of the change in QOL (Quality Of Life) that is defined as the state of social system measured by multiple social-indicators. Applying the DEA/MI to panel social-indicators data of Japan's 47 prefectures for the period 1975-2002, we quantitatively see QOL transition of Japan using "cumulative" frontier shift index in the analysis.The results show that Japan's QOL has risen up for the bubble economy years (the last half of the 1980s) and dropped down for the succeeding lost-decade (the 1990s). We also find the prefectures responsible to the QOL change. Moreover, the use of lower-bound DEA together with the ordinary (upper-bound) DEA enables QOL evaluation in bad respects as well as in good respects.