An Assessment of Availability of Household Amenities and Ownership in Uttarakhand

Performance of any country is not just its economic development but also its social development. Quality of life or well-being is a multidimensional approach and leads to social development in narrow sense and sustainable economic development in broader sense. Quality of life is a subjective measure uses subjective happiness indices by asking people about the living conditions, life satisfaction, happiness and pain and assessing it subjectively. It is helpful in measuring Human Development Index, Index of Well Being, Gross Happiness Index.The standard of living of a person is not determined only by himself or according to his own whims and desires. He has also to consider what society expects from him. There are number of factors on which the quality of life or living condition of an individual depends such as income, size of the family, education, taste and temperament, social customs, general price level, family support like financing of education, housing facilities, structure of family or households structure also plays a significant role in determining one’s living standard as many studies from the past reveal. The well-being of a person depends on the availability of basic household amenities and assets which are essential for making day-to-day activities easier and to maintain the quality of life of an individual or household. In this paper, well-being in Uttarakhand is evaluated by assessing the changing scenario in quality of life or living conditions of households using 17 indicators based on the availability of household amenities and household assets in rural and urban areas of Uttarakhand between the years 2001 and 2011.