This paper provides an approach to measure the quality of life in the European
Union from a multiple perspective: individual, socioeconomic and territorial by creating a
subjective synthetic quality of life indicator, adopting an econometric approach. Amongst
other objectives, the works seeks to obtain a robust synthetic measure of quality of life levels
using the P2
distance method in addition to conducting an econometric analysis using
the European quality of life survey at the individual level. The index comprises information
on different social indicators from various life domains and provides a classification of
European Union countries. Other objectives the paper pursues include exploring the determinants
of the quality of life and ascertaining whether gender differences exist in the levels
of quality of life in the European Union. Conclusions may thus be drawn concerning which
aspects emerge as the most relevant when explaining disparities in quality of life in the
European context from a spatial and gender perspective. The presence of significant gender
gaps in many EU countries should lead us to rethink the design of policies aimed at achieving
equality for EU citizens. The article also studies the suitability of certain indicators and
the estimation problems that arise at the inferential level in a specific context such as the
EU.
