Meaning & use
quality of life
Last updated
Meaning
noununcountable
How good or satisfying a person's everyday existence is, judged by health, comfort, freedom and happiness, not just by income.
Grammar: Used without an article: improve quality of life, or with the or their: the quality of life in the city.
Patterns
- improve quality of life
- quality of life in somewhere
Moving closer to work gave her a better quality of life.
The new park has improved the quality of life for local families.
Doctors consider the patient's quality of life when choosing a treatment.
Common combinations
- improve quality of life
- Cycle lanes help improve quality of life in the city.
- a high quality of life
- The town offers a high quality of life at a modest cost.
- poor quality of life
- Chronic pain led to a poor quality of life for him.
- affect quality of life
- Noise from the road can affect quality of life.
- quality-of-life issues
- The council focuses on quality-of-life issues such as litter and noise.
Synonyms and how they differ
- well-being
- Well-being focuses on how a person feels, while quality of life also covers surroundings such as housing and services.
- standard of living
- Standard of living is mainly about income and material goods, whereas quality of life includes health and happiness.
- lifestyle
- Lifestyle describes how someone lives their daily life, not how good that life is.
Word family
- quality noun
- how good or bad something is
- qualitative adjective
- concerned with qualities rather than numbers
Commonly confused: quality of life or standard of living?
quality of life vs standard of living
Standard of living measures wealth and goods, so a rich country can have a high standard of living but a poor quality of life.
Practice
Residents earn more than before, but long commutes have lowered their ___.
Choose one answer.
Long commutes affect comfort and happiness, which is quality of life. Pay, cost and tax are money measures, and the sentence already says income rose.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “quality of life”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.