A Quantitative–Qualitative Study on Quality of Life in Smaller Towns in the Early Twenty-First Century in Argentina

Abstract

The consideration of quality of life as a category allows the study of social welfare and individual and social satisfaction in specific sociocultural contexts. Quality of life is a sensitive, awareness-raising notion which consists of dimensions and indicators that stimulate reflection upon the ways of achieving a life of fulfillment, for it is sensitive to social, cultural, political, and environmental changes. The aim of this work is to provide information on the quality of life of the population residing in smaller towns in the southeastern suburbs of the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina, within territorial segments undergoing a combination of various processes: repopulation, depopulation, and multi-activity, among others. Its approach requires the use of a quantitative and qualitative methodology, so that the data obtained from primary and secondary sources may account for the phenomena under study. Thus, censuses and statistics, such as interviews and direct observations, are used to characterize the quality of life of the residents of smaller towns in the southeast of the province of Buenos Aires. And though their evolution has been dissimilar, it boils down to an almost universally accepted rule according to which these population groups have subsided into a state of stagnation and undisputable population decline. In this context, it is interesting to reflect on the presence of places whose dynamics can defy this “truth.” The period proposed for the analysis comprises the last decades of the twentieth century and the early twenty-first century, the period between 1991 and 2001 being defined as the “convertibility” period, whereas the years to follow – from 2002 to the present time – have been identified by specialists as “neo-development,” in other words, the “post-convertibility” or “post-neoliberal” era. After the crisis and devaluation in 2001, the decline of the exchange rate convertibility model led to a new stage known as “post-convertibility” (Varesi, Argentina 2002–2011: neo-desarrollismo y radicalización progresista. Realidad Económica Magazine, N° 263 November/December 2011. pp 141–152, 2011; Schorr, Argentina: ¿nuevo modelo o “viento de cola”? Una caracterización en clave comparativa. Nueva Sociedad Magazine, N° 237, January-February 2012. Retrieved December 2014, from http://www.nuso.org. 114–127, 2012). Broadly speaking, it may be asserted that, at this stage, the stimulation of production policies of the 1990s was complemented by the consideration of the social dimension, i.e., a greater involvement of the state through the generation of social policies for local governments. In this context, minor towns may attest to the various impacts of different policies through a variety of socio-territorial expressions, such as depopulation, productive diversification, and repopulation.