Quality of life is a pink donkey

My previous article We can’t have it all: growth vs. quality of life generated a lot of hype on the Facebook page of this fine business website. 157 comments and replies, the vast majority demanding for quality of life instead of growth.

At a Mental Health conference last year, PKF entrusted me to go on a panel with academics and local leaders on the subject. I tried a little exercise with the audience: I asked everybody to close their eyes and imagine… a pink donkey! Everybody’s got their own image of a pink donkey, because there’s no standard pink donkey out there to choose from.

Just like mental health, quality of life is a generic concept that means something different for everybody. Everybody’s calling for it, but nobody can really get their head around it.

We live on a small island where land is a zero-sum game. Where some would like more parks, the others would like more bicycle lanes, to give just two examples, but the concept of quality of life is reaching far beyond.

Quality of life is defined by the World Health Organization as “an individual’s perception of their position in life in the context of the culture and value systems in which they live and in relation to their goals, expectations, standards and concerns.”

One may doubt that a fisherman in Marsaxlokk has the same value system and goals as an iGaming expert in Sliema even if both ask for quality of life.

Quality of life is a social innovation, and just like any other innovation its diffusion follows a normal distribution: the first 2.5 per cent of the population who accepts and adopts a concept are called innovators, the following 13.5 per cent of the population are called early adopters.

If quality of life reaches the next group, the early majority, one may say that the innovation is past “the chasm” and is beyond a trend, but a mainstream concept. Are we sure that more that 15 per cent of the population of Malta knows what quality of life is and is ready to give up growth in some sort of trade-off between the two? I’m pretty sure that the readers of this fine business media outlet will jump off their chairs and scream “yes”, but one can clearly see the selection bias of the situation: innovators and early adopters of social concepts like quality of life read business press and that’s why they know what it is and ask for such. But what about the less educated and poorer demographics of the island who just recently have felt the benefits of growth?

This resembles to what happens at international level: post-industrialized powerhouses like EU, US, Japan, and Australia are asking developing nations such as Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia, China and South Africa (the BRIICS countries) to stop burning coal and cutting trees, but this is how the former group developed in the first place.

This debate cannot be settled on social media pages, but in the agora of the nation. Quality of life needs more debate by politicians, NGOs, and the society. Once we agree on the definition and the limits of the concept of quality of life, government departments should research the reach of the concept within the general population through public tenders. The result should be SMART KPIs (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound Key Performance Indicators) in assumed legislation, for example the Budget Proposals. I’m not talking about Budget 2025, but hopefully 2026.

Until we can Ctrl F (search) the pre-Budget 2025 document for any mentions of the concept, what does quality of life mean to you?

PKF Malta is a fast-growing, progressive firm specialising in audit & assurance, tax, advisory services, and internal audit insurance. Get in touch with today via email at: info@pkfmalta.com or contact us here.