Physical Quality of Life Index

Introduction

• The Physical Quality of Life Index (PQLI) is an attempt to measure the quality of life or well-being of a country. 
• It was developed for the Overseas Development Council in the mid-1970s by Morris David Morris, as one of a number of measures created due to dissatisfaction with the use of GNP as an indicator of development. 
• The key indicators are – basic literacy rate, infant mortality, and life expectancy at age one, all equally weighted on a 0 to 100 scale. 

Advantages of PQLI

• It helps to understand the overall welfare in the economy and how well its  welfare policies are being implemented. This helps the government to take corrective action.
• The method followed to measure PQLI is standard for all the countries. Therefore, it can be used to make comparisons between countries and this helps the relatively underdeveloped countries to take corrective measures.
• The three indicators, i.e. life expectancy rate, infant mortality rate and literacy rate very well represent the welfare of the people of the country. A country wherein all the three indicators are good can be said to be a developed economy.
• PQLI considers the distribution of welfare in the country. A country cannot have a high average of literacy rate, life expectancy and low infant mortality rate unless a large part of the population is covered by the benefits  of economic development.

Drawbacks of PQLI

• It ignores many factors which influence the quality of life such as employment, housing, justice, social security etc.
• It is a simple average of literacy rate, infant mortality rate and life expectancy, i.e. all the factors have been given equal weightage. However, it is difficult to understand the rationale behind giving equal importance to all factors.
• It doesn’t explain the structural change in the economy of a country.

Indicators of PQLI

• Life expectancy rate: It means the average number of years a person is expected to live. As per 2011 census, it is 66.8 years in India.
• Infant mortality: It refers to the number of infants dying within one year of their birth out of every 1000 births. As per the 2011 census, it is 47 per 1000. 
• Basic literacy rate: Any person above the age of 7 years who can read and write in any one language with an ability to understand it  is considered as literate. As per 2011 census, it is 74.04% in India.
• Note: For each of the above indicators, the performance of an individual country is rated on a scale of 1 to 100  where 1 represents the worst performance and 100 represent the best performance. PQLI is then constructed by averaging  these three indicators giving equal weight to each of them.