Page 24 - Contributed Paper Session (CPS) - Volume 6

CPS1472 Mahmoud Mohamed ElSarawy

A new composite wellbeing index: (Egypt &
Malaysia comparison study)
Mahmoud Mohamed ElSarawy
Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS), Cairo, Egypt

Abstract
Gross domestic product (GDP) per capita or income is not the only factor to
measure well-being of the community, there are a lot of variables that affect
it such as achievement of equality and availability of health care and education
services, availability of adequate housing, how to get the major needs for life,
political participation and social activities, availability of a clean healthy
environment. The objective of this study is building an index to measure the
well-being for Egypt and Malaysia, using some economic and social variables
and use this index to make a comparison between these two countries. The
importance of this study relies on making a statistical analysis for the
population characteristics in these countries and also stands on the
development of variables and indicators used through a time series data when
compiling the wellbeing index for each country, and also use these indicators
in international comparisons. This study used the recent available data for
these variables almost 2017, using 5 individual indices contain 19 variables to
calculate Wellbeing index for Egypt and Malaysia. The study revealed that
Egypt and Malaysia wellbeing index was 0.7 and 0.84 respectively.

Keywords
Community satisfaction; International comparisons; Quality of Life

1. Introduction
When talking about economics in some of African and Asian countries, it is
really related to economic and social behaviour type. Measuring well-being
involves identifying the key components of a good life and then selecting a
set of indicators and variables that provide information about the progress of
society with respect to these outcomes. Therefore, it is important to study the
level of well-being and its indicators in all countries. In this study will focus on
Egypt and Malaysia to calculate wellbeing index. The index of well-being
appeared in the last decade and it has been measured using a variety of
methodologies such as the Australian unity wellbeing index, Canadian index
of wellbeing, and better life index which was adopted by the "Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development" (OECD).

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