The quality of life as attribute of sustainability

Purpose The quality of life (QoL) index is a well‐known measurement schedule to compare citizens' life facilities across countries of the world. Based on rational and factual parameters such as gross national product and gender equity, it has to be reinforced with psychological aspects like those observed in customer satisfaction and total quality management. This paper aims to document a QoL study on health area that focused on validating its theoretical role as an attribute of sustainability, itself one of the two Makovian reverse processes in the political system. Design/methodology/approach The different attributes of the QoL were studied from the research literature, elaborating a structure of these elements. For a second approach, citizens were interviewed about their QoL perception, with the “voice of the customer” method, as was done in quality practice from companies to catch customer needs and expectations. Findings The application shows confusions between QoL, wellbeing, health, happiness and liberty, inducing the research to analyse its effects in the sustainability and the policy definitions. This paper presents the place of sustainability and safety in political systems with a Markov model description. Practical implications The impact of QoL's variability perception in the instability of political systems incites politicians to better understand sustainability and safety processes functioning, in order to improve the political system, and avoid spending time on designing short term answers to citizens' dissatisfaction with a lack of mastery. Originality/value Learning from technology and industry history allows us to understand that growing complexity in these systems and conduces to abandon linear models and adopt cross reverse differential ones such as Markov. By analogy with human beings, in the paper the aggregation method and Markov model describe QoL's place in sustainability and political systems.