Physical Quality of Life Index
Also called: PQLI · Topic: Human Development: Concept, Approaches and Measurement · NCERT: Beyond NCERT
Meaning
The Physical Quality of Life Index (PQLI) is a simple measure of how well people live. Morris D. Morris created it in 1979. It uses three indicators: literacy rate (the share of people who can read and write), infant mortality (how many babies die before their first birthday) and life expectancy at age one (how many more years a one-year-old is expected to live). Each indicator gets a score from 0 to 100, and the PQLI is the simple average of the three. It leaves out income on purpose, so it shows whether people's lives are actually improving, not just whether money is growing.
Example
Kerala, on the south-western coast of India, has high literacy, long lives and low infant mortality, even though its income per head is modest. A region like this does well on a PQLI-type measure. An income-based measure would rank it lower.
Don't confuse with
- Human Development Index (HDI): the HDI includes income (GNI per capita) along with health and education. The PQLI has no income indicator at all.
Related concepts
- Limitations of the HDI
- Human Poverty Index
- Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index
- Gender Development Index
- Gender Inequality Index
- Multidimensional Poverty Index
- Planetary pressures-adjusted HDI