Quality of Life in the EU

Eurofound releases findings of its 2016 Survey

Brussels, 13 December 2017 | Published in Social, Research

‘How would you rate the quality of social housing services in your country?

Eurofound has started releasing findings from its 2016 Quality of Life Survey. Like its previous editions, the 2016 survey provides a number of interesting indicators on housing (including for instance number of rooms in accommodation, types of ownership/tenures, quality aspects, the likelihood of having to move due to affordability) as well as neighbourhood quality and access to services at local level.

Interestingly, the survey also looks at the quality of public services, which has overall improved since 2011. As for social housing, data show the highest rates of satisfaction in Austria and Finland, followed by Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden - countries where the social housing sector (or actually municipal rental housing in the case of Sweden) is relatively large and typically houses a wide and diversified population group. Malta also shows a rate of satisfaction, despite having a smaller social housing sector.

Also interesting, users of social housing services tend to give higher quality ratings than non-users – showing that there is still some degree of prejudice and misconceptions about this sector in the wider public.