Eastern Europe: Lifestyle stats
Definitions
- Amphetamine use: Percentage of people who have used amphetamines, generally for ages 15 and over. Spain and Greece: data for ages 15-64. Netherlands: data for ages 15-59. United Kingdom: data for ages 16-59. Germany: data for ages 18-59. Belgium: data for ages 18-65. France: data for ages 18-69. Data generally for 1999 or 1998. Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden: data for 1997. Austria: data for 1996. Denmark, France: data for 1995. Belgium: data for 1994. Canada: data for 1993.
- Cannabis use: Percentage share of people who have used cannabis, generally including people 15 and above. Different nations have, however, focussed their studies on different age groups. United States and Netherlands: data for years 12 and above. Greece: Data for ages 12 to 64. Australia: data for ages 14 and above. United Kingdom: data for ages 16 to 59. Germany: data for ages 18-59. Denmark and France: data for ages 18 to 69. Data for 1998 or 1999 in most cases. Germany, Poland, and Spain: data for 1997. Austria: data for 1996. Denmark, France and Ireland: data for 1995.
- Food and drink > Alcohol > Consumption > Current: Alcohol consumption - Litres per capita by population aged above 15. (Data for 2003).
- Food and drink > Exports: Food comprises the commodities in SITC sections 0 (food and live animals), 1 (beverages and tobacco), and 4 (animal and vegetable oils and fats) and SITC division 22 (oil seeds, oil nuts, and oil kernels)."
- Food and drink > Pork > Consumption per capita: Measures taken in 1997 and based on carcass weight. Selected Nations only.
- Happiness level > Very happy: Proportion of people who answered the survey question: "Taking all things together, would you say you are: very happy, quite happy, not very happy, or not at all happy?" by stating that they were "Very happy".
- Happiness net: This statistic is compiled from responses to the survey question: "Taking all things together, would you say you are: very happy, quite happy, not very happy, or not at all happy?". The "Happiness (net)" statistic was obtained via the following formula: the percentage of people who rated themselves as either "quite happy" or "very happy" minus the percentage of people who rated themselves as either "not very happy" or "not at all happy".
- Leisure > Leisure Time > Leisure time across activities > Sports: The measures of the quantity of leisure time presented here are based on information drawn from national and International Time Use Surveys. Participants to these surveys fill diaries over a number of days. Information from these diaries is then aggregated into a standard activity classification, with the sum of minutes spent in various (primary) activities summing to 24 hours per day. Time-use data from national surveys have been re-coded by the OECD to a common classification based on the five main categories of “paid work and study”; “home production”; “personal care”; “leisure activities”; and “other activities not classified elsewhere”. Adjustments have been made to account for cross-country differences in the age of people covered by the various national surveys. Finally, to account for differences across countries in time devoted to personal care, this has been set equal to the amount devoted to this activity in the country where this is lowest (Norway); the excess of daily time that residents of some countries devote to personal care has been added to leisure.
- Leisure > Recreation and culture > Household expenditure on recreation and culture: Household expenditure on recreation and culture includes purchases of audio-visual, photographic and computer equipment; CDs and DVDs; musical instruments; camper vans; caravans; sports equipment; toys; domestic pets and related products; gardening tools and plants; newspapers; tickets to sporting matches, cinemas and theatres; and spending on gambling (including lottery tickets) less any winnings. It excludes expenditures on restaurants, hotels, and travel and holiday homes but includes package holidays. Government expenditures include administration of sporting, recreational and cultural affairs as well as the maintenance of zoos, botanical gardens, public beaches and parks; support for broadcasting services and, where present, support for religious, fraternal, civic, youth and other social organisations (including the operation and repair of facilities and payment to clergy and other officers.) Also included are grants to artists and arts companies. Capital outlays such as the construction of sports stadiums, public swimming pools, national theatres, opera houses and museums are included.
- Life satisfaction: Most scores are based on responses to the following question: "All things considered, how satisfied or dissatisfied are you with your life-as-a-whole now? 1 dissatisfied to10 satisfied" (item code O-SLW/c/sq/n/10/a). Scores of ten nations are based on responses to a somewhat different question: "Suppose the top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder the worst possible life. Where on this ladder do you feel you personally stand at the present time?" The response was rated on a ladder scale ranging from 0 to 10 (item code O-BW/c/sq/l/11/c). We transformed the scores using the information of nations in which both this item and the above question on life-satisfaction had been used in about the same years.
- Life satisfaction inequality: This data is indicative of how much citizens differ in enjoyment of their life-as-a-whole.Life-satisfaction assessed by means of surveys in samples of the general population. Scores may be too low in some countries, due to under sampling of rural and illiterate population. In this ranking the focus is not on the level of happiness in the country, but on inequality in happiness among citizens.Inequality in happiness can be measured by the dispersion of responses to survey-questions. The degree of dispersion can be expressed statistically in the standard deviation and surveys items rated on a 10 step numerical scale are particularly usefull for that purpose. Most scores are based on responses to the following question: "All things considered, how satisfied or dissatisfied are you with your life-as-a-whole now? 1 dissatisfied to10 satisfied".
- Roller coasters: Number of roller coasters in each country. Includes both wooden and steel constructions.
- Roller coasters per million: Number of roller coasters in each country. Includes both wooden and steel constructions. Figures expressed per million population for the same year.
- Society > Subjective well-being > People reporting negative experiences > Depression: Measures of life satisfaction reflect the cognitive evaluation of life as a whole, now and five years from now, made by each person. The measures shown here are based on ladder-of-life questions, which ask respondents to rate their life from the worst (0) to the best (10) level, and refer to the share of people who rate their life (today and in the future) at step 7 or higher. Measures of positive and negative experiences and feelings refer to people who declared having experienced six different forms of negative and positive experiences during the previous day. Also shown are two composite indexes of positive and negative experiences, calculated at the individual record level. For each person, the 6 items are recoded so that positive answers are scored as 1 and negative answers (including “don’t know” and “refused to answer”) a 0; an individual record has an index calculated if it has at least 5 out of 6 valid scores. Each person’s composite index is the mean of valid items multiplied by 100, and the country level score shown in the table is the mean of all individual records for which an index was calculated.Population shares are calculated as a percentage of all respondents excluding those who refused or didn’t’ know how to answer the various survey questions.
- Society > Volunteering and social support > Volunteering > Volunteered your time: A tool for valuing volunteering is provided by the new Handbook on Nonprofit Institutions in the System of National Accounts, developed by the Johns Hopkins Center for Civic Society Studies in co-operation with the United Nations Statistics Division. The Handbook recommends that countries regularly produce “satellite accounts” of the non-profit sector, providing a comprehensive picture of its size and operation. So far, eight OECD countries have implemented this handbook, with data referring to a year between 1999 and 2004, and four additional countries are committed to do so in the future.Beyond the comprehensive information available through these handbooks, information on the size of volunteering and social support is available for a larger number of countries through household surveys. The data presented here are drawn from the Gallup World Poll. Data on volunteering are based on the two following questions: “Have you donated money to an organization in the last month?” and “Have you volunteered your time to an organization in the last month?”. Data on social support from the same survey are based on the questions: “If you were in trouble, do you have relatives or friends you can count on to help you whenever you need them?” and “Have you helped a stranger or someone you didn’t know who needed help in the last month?”. Population shares are calculated as a percentage of all respondents excluding those who refused or didn’t’ know how to answer the various questions.
