In light of rural Asia's 30-year population increase, this book reviews trends and patterns in the quality of life, identifies and analyzes options for private and public policies for the improvement of the quality of life, and assesses the prospects for the quality of life in the context of globalization, privatization, and technological change.

This study looks at the social and economic status, family and workforce roles, and quality of life of women in the rural sectors of monsoonal and equatorial Asia, from Pakistan to Japan, where life often is characterized by unemployment, underemployment, and poverty.

Recent research suggests that rural residents in the global North are happier than urban populations in the same countries. This goes against received wisdom in the field, where the opposite is usually assumed. Is quality of life better in the rural areas? How and under which circumstances is this the case? What can we learn from digging deeper into the rural-urban happiness paradox and which critical questions does this leave us with for the future? What might policymakers, planners, architects, and other decision-makers learn about how, when, and where to intervene? Rural quality of life delves deeper into these matters by asking what quality of life in rural areas is all about - in everyday life, through interventions in the built environment, in civil society and measures of subjective well-being.

This book studies and compares quality of life in 29 countries/societies in Asia: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei, Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Korea(South), Laos, Malaysia, Maldives, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam. We utilize the AsiaBarometer Surveys conducted annually from 2003 through 2008. We focus on the notion of subjective quality of life and conceptualize it as two levels, global and domain. After we explain about the AsiaBarometer Survey Project, we explore current country profile, demographics, lifestyles, value priorities, specific life domain assessment and overall quality of life. We then estimate the independent effects of demographics, lifestyles, value priorities, life domain assessment on the overall quality of life within each society. As well as comparing the results between nations, we look for key generalized characteristics of life quality for the entire and sub-regions of Asia.

An economic transformation has occurred in much of rural Asia during the last 2 decades. Large parts of the region have made remarkable progress with substantial gains in food security, per capita income, quality of life, and poverty reduction. Yet, rural Asia remains home to 700 million people living in poverty, many of whom have no access to safe water and sanitation. To explore new opportunities and challenges facing rural society in Asia, a study of rural Asia was undertaken by ADB. The main results and recommendations contained in the five volumes have been included in the overview and should prove useful to those concerned with improving the economic and social conditions of rural populations in Asia through sustainable development.