PQLI and DALY

Karisni.P
111601126
Roll No: 124
Objectives of this presentation
• Full form and Definition of PQLI

• Indicators under PQLI

• Uses and the ultimate objective of the PQLI

• What DALY is

• Calculation of DALY

• Uses of DALY
 PQLI (Physical Quality of Life Index)
• The Physical Quality of Life Index (PQLI) is an
attempt to measure the quality of life or well-being of a
country.

• Developed for the Overseas Development Council in

the mid-1970s by David Morris, due to dissatisfaction
with use of Gross National Product(GNP) as an
indicator of development.

• Consolidates 3 indicators:
 IMR (Infant Mortality Rate)
 Life expectancy at age 1 and
 Literacy
• For each component, the national and international
performance of countries is measured on a scale of 0
to performance of 100 with 0 defining the absolute
worst performance and 100 defining the absolute
best performance.

• PQLI has not taken per capita GNP into consideration

showing that “money is not everything”.
Uses of PQLI

• Used for national and international comparison

of human well-being.

• Countries of Middle East with high per capita income

do not have a very high PQLI but places like Sri
Lanka and Kerala have low per capita income but
high PQLI.

• Therefore PQLI does not measure economic growth

it measures the results of social, economic and
political policies.
• The PQLI facilitates international and regional
comparisons by minimizing developmental and
cultural partiality.

• It is intended to complement, not replace GNP.

• The ultimate objective is to attain a PQLI of 100.

Calculation of PQLI
• The composite index is calculated by taking the
average of all the three indicators (IMR, Life
expectancy at age 1 and Literacy), giving equal
weight to each of them.

• PQLI is therefore scaled from 0 to 100 as follows:

 IMR weightage is on the scale of 0-100. 0 is for

IMR of 220/1000 live births and 100 for 7/1000
live births. This is denoted as ‘A’.
 Life-expectancy at age 1 year weightage is on
the scale of 0-100. 0 is for 38 years and 100 is
for 77 years. This is denoted as ‘B’.

 Literacy rate is denoted as ‘C’.

PQLI = A+B+C
3
 DALY (Disability Adjusted Life Years)
• It is a measure of overall disease burden
expressed as a number of years lost over ill
health, disability or early death.

• Developed by Harvard University for World Bank in

1990, adopted by WHO in 2000.

• The Global Burden of Disease project uses DALY to

capture the population impact of fatal and non
fatal disabling conditions through a single
measure.
 How DALY is calculated
• DALY combines:

 Years of Lost Life(YLL): No. of deaths at each

age x expected remaining years of life according to a
global standard life expectancy.

 YLL = N x L (N = number of deaths due to condition, L

= standard life expectancy at age of death).

 Years Lost to Disability(YLD): No.of incident cases due

to injury and illness x avg. duration of the disease x a
weighing factor reflecting the severity of the disease on a
scale of 0(perfect health) to 1(dead).

 YLD = I x DW x L (I = number of incident cases in the

population, L = average duration of the case until
remission or death in years and DW = disability weight
of a specific condition).
 DALY = YLD + YLL
• DALY relies on time which is the most appropriate
measure of the effects of chronic illness.

• 1 DALY = 1 year of healthy life lost.

• Japanese life expectancy statistics are used as

standard to measure premature death due to long life
expectancy of the Japanese.
Uses of DALY
1. To assist in setting health service priorities.

2. To identify the disadvantaged groups.

3. To target health interventions.

4. To measure the results of health interventions.

5. To provide comparable measures for planning and

evaluating programmes.

6. To compare the health status of different countries.

 References
1. Park’s Textbook of Preventive and Social Medicine
23rd Edition.

2. Community Medicine with Recent Advances 5th

Editon, AH Suryakantha.

3. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Quality_of
_Life_Index

4. https://222.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12261723

5. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disability-
adjusted_life_year