Quality of life and its disparities in districts of Slovakia

Abstract The paper focuses on one of the contemporary social concepts—quality of life—research on which has experienced significant growth in recent decades, including efforts to measure quality of life at the national and local levels. This paper specifically examines the spatial differentiation of quality of life at the district level. While previous research on urban and regional quality of life has often relied on various objective indicators of infrastructure and amenities, this paper takes a different approach by analysing satisfaction with a place as a living environment and its potential for fostering a good life. The combined objective indicators of amenities contribute to the overall quality of a place, which is measured through a single subjective indicator. The quality of life in districts was determined by using codes of quality of life within individual settlements. For the average value of quality of life and the standard deviation in districts, the spatial autocorrelation rate was calculated using Moran’s I. It can be interpreted as meaning that both the average quality of life in individual districts and its variability are distributed rather randomly in space, without forming significant geographical patterns. This conclusion is quite unusual in the context of dependent socioeconomic phenomena, since most phenomena assess a certain degree of spatial dependence.