The Research and Questionare:
For our Questionnaire, we have gone to Centrum and have interviewed people. The full questionnaire is on the last page.
This question shows how many tourists we met which might give us an idea of what the percentage of tourism was in the country. Problem with this is that we have been interviewing in Centrum which has increased the chances of meeting a tourist rather than if we interviewed somewhere on the countryside where not many tourists visit. We have mainly asked this question so we can get the standard of living from the real inhabitants of Holland.
We have done this table to see what age groups we have interviewed and keep track so that we don’t interview too many elderly people (60+) or too many young people (0-15) because most of the elderly people might be already retired and wont be able to answer the questions that we have written onto the questionnaire and the young people on the other hand don have a job and are most likely still students and therefore they cannot answer our Questionnaire fully
I have found this question quite irrelevant although this question can in fact tell us about the SOL. We can look at the prices of houses in different areas and then see which neighborhood is the richest and which neighborhood is cheaper and consists of cheaper living.
The employment rate can tell us loads about the standard of living because it can tell us how many people do work and earn money and how many people don’t. If there is a high unemployment in the country, people can earn more, spend more and the GDP is therefore increased. Shops will start doing better so the government doesn’t have to support them as much.
If the country has a higher part time working people, it means people spend less time at work and take care of their children or do other things. Although Part time jobs can have their positives, they have their negatives, people earn less most of the time, there fore cant support their family as much as people who work full time and earn more money. Once again, the GDP gets increased.
I find this question quite relevant because it tells us how many people do different types of jobs. For example if the manufacturing or agriculture rate is high, this means a lot of people do labor work where else service and business sector do more managing and do less hard labor work. Although if the manufacturing and agriculture rate are higher, the country can be better off because it shows that it has a lot of industries and most of these jobs help the country so the country itself gets improved but the people might like it less since it is hard labor work most of the time.
We have asked people with how many people they live with and then made a averse of that. It is better to have less people in your household because if you do have more people in your family, you have to earn more money in order to fully support it. It is also better for the country if people have less children because then they the age group will increase and many developed countries have a higher aged group because if the age group increases, it means more people are going be able to work and it will increase the GDP of the nation.
This shows what people use for transportation and if more people use cars, they pollute the air more so this might cause pollution and therefore lowering the SOL. This also shows that if people use bike or walking, its healthy and they lead a healthier life which increases their SOL.
This off course shows how many people can afford these facilities, the more people that have Tvs, Phones, internets and computers spend money on these facilities and increasing the GDP for the country. People are also happier with life if they own these facilities.
I have done secondary research on Slovakia and I tried to compare the same SOL factors. I tried finding as many as I could but since Slovakia isn’t a vey big country, I wasn’t able to find some information.
Comparative Data:
I wasn’t able to find a comparison to this chart but as you can see, this chart shows that majority of people (87 percent) own a TV which increases the SOL for the country since the GDP gets increased and also the luxury of people.
Table 3 How many people own a phone? (Netherlands)
The Pie chart shows it clearly, Netherlands dominates in this category over Slovakia when it comes to the quality of SOL. I have only one possible explanation why this might be why Slovakia has such a low usage of land phones. In Slovakia, there are really bad and expensive companies providing land phone services. That’s why many people have decided that they will cancel their contract, and get a mobile instead. So in the end there is a minority of people using land phones and more people using cell phones. The Netherlands has more land phone users because in Netherlands, the wages are higher so people can afford o buy a land phone If you own a phone, your Standard of living is higher quality since you are able to afford it and it increases the social life of individuals so their standard of living becomes higher quality.
As you can see, there is a huge difference between these two. In the Netherlands, majority of people (95 percent) have a internet connection and there fore a higher SOL because internet is a luxorious facility used in most household of richer people. Also, Since they can afford internet connection, their GDP is higher. On the other hand, in Slovakia, barely half of the people (52 percent) have internet connection. This shows that the SOL is obviously lower in this case in Slovakia because less people can afford internet connection. Although my research has shown that the number of internet users in Slovakia is starting to increase rapidly.
()
Slovakia’s Unemployment rate is 8 percent and according to our results the Dutch have a much higher unemployment rate. Officially, the Dutch have unemployment of 4.8 percent. ()
Our results might be inaccurate because we interviewed many people not yet able to work (age group 0-15). Slovakia has a high unemployment rate when it comes to comparing with Holland if we use the official 4.8 percent. Having 36 percent of unemployment for a country like Netherlands is almost impossible to become realistic since it is economically very well developed. The unemployment rate shows that the SOL is much lower in Slovakia because there are people that don’t have a job so they don’t earn any money and they cant spend it and the GDP of Slovakia decreases. Whilst Netherlands has a quite low unemployment so their GDP income is higher than Slovakia’s.
In these two Pie charts, you can see that Slovakia has a much higher majority of people working Full time whilst Netherlands has barely over half of people working full time. This means that the SOL is better for Slovakians because a full time job is better paid so therefore they earn more money and they can spend more money. Netherlands have quite a lot percentage of people working Part time so they earn less and the total GDP income decreases. Off course this has its own advantages like I mentioned before, part time working parents spend more time at home so they spend more time home with their families which might increase their individual SOL. A Full time job might be stressing for an individual but the country’s SOL increases.
This comparison shows that a majority of employed Slovakians fall under the sector of Service while in Netherlands, the majority falls under business. The more people that work in Service and Business sector are most of the time better paid than the people working in agriculture or manufacturing (unless you are some sort of a higher rank). Netherlands have a very increased of “other” sector but this might be error result because the people we interviewed didn’t seem to know which sector their work belonged to so they just picked “other”. Slovakia has a increased agriculture while Holland has only 2 percent. This means that Slovakia produces more goods, takes care of the land which is good for the nation because then the country doesn’t have to buy more expensive goods from foreign countries so it spends less money. Whilst the Netherlands spend more money on buying goods from foreign lands and countries. One of the reasons why Slovakia might have a higher increased agriculture is because Slovakia covers more land property then Netherlands so people in Slovakia use a lot of space for fields growing goods. Manufacturing in Slovakia is almost the same as in Netherlands. Both of the countries own a lot of industries. Which is good for the country since it can produce goods itself. Although the workers in manufacturing sector earn less money individually so they have less money to spend so the GDP decreases.
I wasn’t able to find a comparison data to this for Slovakia. This Pie chart shows that majority of Dutch people use Bike as a main transport which makes their life more healthier and increases their SOL. They prefer biking over car riding so there is less polluted air which makes the Dutch SOL increase. Public transport is also used quite often instead of cars.
Conclusion:
If you have a land phone you have automatically a internet connection and most of the time a TV connection. The prices of the Internet connections in Slovakia and Netherlands are approximately the same but the income of individuals is not the same.
Bibliography:
"Infrastracture Slovakia." Slovakia.org the guide to Slovak Republic. 7 Sept. 2008 <>.
Netreba. "The economy of Slovakia." Referaty. 22 Feb. 2007. 7 Sept. 2008 <http://referaty.atlas.sk/cudzie-jazyky/anglictina/28567/the-economy-of-slovakia>.
