USJ, Macau Business Press Release – People rate the government’s performance in improving the quality of life in Macau as “neutral”, according to the latest Macau Business Quality of Life report (4th quarter, 2011), conducted by the University of Saint Joseph for the monthly magazine published by De Ficcao - Projectos Multimedia.

The specific topic of this survey – a project started in 2007 – was “Priorities for improvement”. And when asked what should be the priority areas for improvement, respondents clearly highlight housing, inflation and public transportation, in agreement with other recent studies in Macau. Other important areas mentioned include health services, education and the environment.

More specifically, recommendations pointed out the following measures in need:

- To control prices in the housing market, by increasing the number of affordable housing, and enacting regulation to reduce speculation;

- To increase competition throughout the different economic sectors and to peg the MOP to the RMB, to reduce inflation;

- To reduce the amount of disruptive work in Macau’s roads; to increase  the numbers, and quality, of buses and taxis, as well as of parking spaces, and to decrease the amount of motorcycles;

- Building more hospitals, hiring more health specialists, standardizing the local educational system, reducing the traffic, and increasing the amount of green spaces in Macau.

Moderate satisfaction

As usual, we continue to monitor Macau people’s satisfaction with their lives and with the overall living conditions in Macau, through the application of internationally established wellbeing indicators, namely the Personal Wellbeing Index (PWI) and the National Wellbeing Index (NWI), which are slightly lower than these in previous surveys.

People in Macau are moderately satisfied with their lives, and with living conditions. As in previous studies, people are more satisfied with their personal relationships, safety and health than with their achievements in life, future security and community connectedness. On the other hand, regarding living conditions in Macau, people point out the government and environment as the least positive areas, whereas the security of the territory, the economy, and business conditions are generally seen more favorably.

Results are a little lower than the averages gathered in previous surveys, but higher than the lowest values registered during the 2008 financial crisis.

The society sector with higher levels of education and income is generally more satisfied with their lives, but more critical of living conditions in Macau; the exact opposite of people in lower education / income brackets.

Data from this survey will be analyzed in the coming weeks, and will be published in a yearly book at the end of the series. The second survey of this series will be carried out in the 1st Quarter of 2012.

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