PALESTINIAN SOCIETY - Fafo

Introduction
Marianne Heiberg
Parts of this chapter rely heavily on the. work of FAFO
colleagues Knud Knudsen and Ole Fredrik Ugland.
Level of living conditions study, .
the organising concept
This report consists of the base line results of the first level of living
conditions study ever conducted among Palestinians in the GazaStrip,
the West Bank and Arab Jerusalem. It offers a panoramic view of the
general life situation ofPalestinian men and women living in Israel' s
occupied territories. Data was collected during a two month period in
the summer of 1992. A carefully selected representative sample of
2500 Palestinian households were interviewed by some 100 specially
trained Palestinian data collectors.
In order to place the results presented in this report in to perspective
it is critical to understand what is meant by a person' s or group' s "level
of living" or "living conditions". Previously the most commonly
accepted indicators of individual and social welfare have been
economic ones. Indicators such as personal income and gross national
product per capita, to mention afew, have been widelyused partly due
to the belief by ordinary people and policy-makers alike that human
welfare could in essence be deduced from the relative ec(:mornic
prosperity of the society as a wholeI. The general policy implication
of such an approach was, in consequence, fairly straightforward. If
increases in GNP per capita translated directly or indirectly into the
betterment of the human condition, then the emphasis in development
planning should focus almost exclusively on fostering national eco­
nornic growth, since growth would ultiinately benefit everyone.
Over the last generation or so the primacy of economic indicators
in the measurement of individual welfare has diminished somewhat.
While econornic growth is still viewed as essential to human welfare,
it is by no means seen as sufficient. Not only was the goal of sustained
econornic growth more elusive than initially assumed, but the nega-
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