Changing Values and Social Knowledge: The Social Indicators Movement, Quality of Life Studies, and the ‘Silent Revolution’ in the 1970s

In 1977 the political scientist Ronald Inglehart published his book The Silent Revolution, triggering a long-lasting debate on ‘value change’. His main thesis is in the book’s first and probably most cited sentence: ‘The values of Western publics have been shifting from an overwhelming emphasis on material well-being and physical security toward greater emphasis on the quality of life.’1 Inglehart thus used the term ‘quality of life’ to capture the essence of the value change he suggested was taking place in the 1970s; however, he did not mention that this term was of very recent origin. It was hardly heard before the mid 1960s, at which point its usage increased spectacularly. This rise was not at all a silent revolution; rather, media reports frequently discussed the popularity of this new term.
In January 1970, for example, a New York Post columnist forecast: ‘The quality of life . . . That’s the phrase most likely to dominate the 1970s.
Translated into many languages and widely received as a new key goal of Western societies and a challenge to the postwar era’s focus on material well-being and economic growth, the phrase ‘quality of life’ evolved into a pivotal reference point in debates on such divergent issues as the environment, work satisfaction, social welfare, health care, leisure culture, family life, and urban development. From the late 1960s, quality of life became a key term of the so-called social indicators movement, whose proponents—governmental officials, statisticians, and academics—campaigned for the development of new measures of social progress beyond GNP.3 Measuring quality of life subsequently became a priority for international organizations, government agencies, and social science research centres. Endeavours to monitor people’s quality of life created a new world of ideas, concepts, numbers, graphs, and facts which circulated between universities, state agencies, NGOs, the media, and social movements, and affected how social issues
were perceived and discussed in public.