The well-being of the community. Social welfare is an intangible; it is hard to quantify. It cannot be measured in terms to the quantity of goods and services available, because this is to equate welfare with material abundance. Social welfare is not the same as standard of living. The utility of something, the ability of a good or service to satisfy human want, will vary from person to person. A more accurate evaluation of social welfare would have to be something like a quality of life index, and include such things as environmental factors (quality of air and water), social indicators like levels of crime and drug abuse, availability of essential services like education and hospitals, and other non-material factors like religious faith. The more diverse the community the harder it is to evaluate social welfare, since different groups may place widely varying values on different aspects of community life.