The Decent Society in International Comparison. Indicators of Social Quality World Wide

The paper draws upon the concept of the “Decent Society” as a way of understanding how people can be enabled to live decently good lives that optimise their capabilities as set out in the book by Abbott, Sapsford and Wallace to be published in 2016 by Routledge.   The book identifies and collates indicators for a Decent Society building on the interaction of economic security, social cohesion, social inclusion and empowerment as basic elements (derived from the model of Social Quality.  The concern in the book is not so much with what nations around the world have achieved as with the conditions and infrastructure they have put in place to make it possible for people to flourish in these four respects. This paper goes a stage further to look at subjective survey orientations to the Decent Society in order to answer the questions: ’Do people think that they live in a Decent Society?’ (using the European Social Survey) and ‘Do people want a Decent Society?’ (using the World Values Survey).